


Cartography

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Death in Paradise
Genre: (I make no apologies for this trope), Awkward Romance, Background Case, Bechdel Test Pass, Bicycles, Bilingual Character(s), Blood, Candles, Case Fic, Character(s) of Color, Comfort Food, Constellations, Crossword Puzzles, Developing Relationship, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Fix-it, Episode Related, Episode: s03e01 Death of a Detective, Feelings, Food, Français | French, Friendship/Love, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, Interrogation, Light Angst, Major Character Injury, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Canonical Character(s), Multi, Mutual Pining, Mythology References, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Pastries, Photographs, Shakespeare Quotations, Sharing a Bed, Some Humor, Swearing, Tea, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Voodoo, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 22,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23283862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: “The whole point of cartography is to illuminate the unknown” — DI Richard Poole 1x7In which the team of the Honoré Police Station investigates the attempted murder of Richard Poole. Camille leads the investigation while dealing with her own reactions to the event.
Relationships: Camille Bordey & Richard Poole, Camille Bordey/Richard Poole
Comments: 131
Kudos: 111





	1. The Phone Call

**Author's Note:**

> I liked the bold concept of s3e1, but it left me wanting more of the character and relationship development that we'd gotten in the first two seasons. So this is my alternate/extended version of that episode. It's also my first fic for this fandom, so leniency and feedback as I find my way into characterization are both appreciated.

Camille surveyed her string of paper dolls judiciously. Maybe they could be a series of suspects and criminals — she could color them in and have Richard guess who they were when he got back. Despite Fidel’s optimism, she couldn’t help feeling that Richard’s absence was somehow unnatural. He’d told her about his schooldays, and despite the fact that they had been unhappy, she knew more about them than about his time at university.

_“Revisiting your riotous youth?” she’d asked him, when he told her about the reunion._

_“Not really.” He smiled a little, letting her know that he understood she was teasing him. They stood side by side on his verandah, elbows on the railing, beers in hand. He’d cooked — a thank-you for looking after Harry in his absence, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of a Richard Poole who thought to do such things._

_“So… not many friends.”_

_“A few.”_

_Camille raised both hands in protest, beer bottle dangling dangerously. “Yeah, sure, I didn’t mean…”_

_“I know you didn’t. After all,” he continued, “they didn’t even realize I was here.”_

_“I wouldn’t be so sure. If it were an Agatha Christie novel,” opined Camille, “it would all be a ploy to… to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse. To have you unravel an unsolved murder committed among the dreaming spires of Oxford…”_

_“I _beg_ your pardon. It was Cambridge, and the two are _not_ interchangeable. The college I attended is one of England’s most venerable institutions of learning, where…” Camille could no longer stifle her giggles, and he broke off sheepishly. Privately, she wondered when he had started allowing her to tease him; when they had both started enjoying it; how it had happened so gradually that it felt as natural as breathing._

_“Well, it’s a time for studying, isn’t it?” he’d said, not quite defensively. “Improving one’s mind, going to special lectures by visiting Norwegians about how the behavior of trout illustrates the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.” And she’d laughed and laughed._

_“Absolutely true,” he’d said, with his unshakeable solemnity belied by his eyes alone. “You see, the rainbow trout assumes, swimming along in its peaceful Kentish river…”_

_She’d distracted him by asking about trout-fishing, and the Norwegian’s lecture had been forgotten. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something she’d missed, some past melancholy of his that could explain his present actions._

Dwayne sat with his feet on his desk, making notes on a case file and humming calypso under his breath. “…at all, at all, at all.”

“I know the words to that,” said Camille warningly.

“You want me to sing them?”

“No.” The air was warm and still, the shadows motionless on the yellow walls.

“Not even a stray goat,” sighed Fidel.

“Stray English tourists,” said Camille. “Which is worse.” 

“They’re in a holiday villa,” said Fidel, “not wandering around loose. They’ll make less trouble that way.”

Camille leant her head on her hand; the blades of the fan whirred a little too loudly above them. It had never been quite right since Richard’s attempt to fix it.

“But what will they make of the Chief?” asked Dwayne rhetorically. “And what will the Chief make of them?”

“We’ll probably get a complaint,” said Camille darkly. “Legal slander by a member of the police force. Fidel, what are the laws on that?”

“I…”

Dwayne removed his pen from between his teeth. “Don’t worry, Fidel, there aren’t any.” 

“Complaints against the police may address both civil and criminal misconduct…” began Fidel. The ringing of the telephone cut him off.

“Honoré Police Station,” said Dwayne, but he held the receiver away from his ear, grimacing, before he had finished getting the words out. “Hysterical female.”

Camille raised her eyebrows at him. She would have done more if she hadn’t been able to hear the woman — shrieking, sobbing — from across the room. “Ask if she’s safe. Ask if she needs an ambulance.”

“Ma’am?” said Dwayne. “Ma’am? Miss?” A hiccup among the sobs. “Are you hurt?” More sobbing. “Where are you located? Yes, I know where that is, miss; an ambulance will be on its way. _Hilltop Villas_ ,” he mouthed to Fidel. “Yes, yes, that was very brave. We will send someone up directly.” His face changed. “I’m going to put you on the phone with my colleague.” He shoved the handset into Fidel’s hand before the younger man had finished talking to the dispatcher.

“Camille,” said Dwayne, grabbing his motorcycle helmet, “let’s see if we can beat an ambulance to Hilltop Villas.” 

“I’m your superior officer,” called Camille after him. “You’ll be fine, Fidel,” she added as she jogged past his desk. “Richard is already there,” she said to Dwayne, “and I didn’t hear him on the phone.” She was trying to ignore a dread that settled on her like a chill as she emerged into the sun. 

“Are you sure you’re not overreacting?” She was climbing into the sidecar as she asked the question, fastening the straps of a too-large helmet with clumsy fingers.

“It’s the Chief,” said Dwayne grimly, and proceeded to break every traffic law Saint-Marie had, and several it didn’t, as they sped through an indifferently gorgeous landscape to Hilltop Villas.


	2. Hilltop Villas

Racing across the island, Camille reviewed possible scenarios. Years of undercover work had made it a habit amounting to compulsion. Richard couldn’t be dead; Dwayne wouldn’t have demanded an ambulance (an unhelpful interior voice supplied that he could have died since.) Heatstroke from one of his stupid suits? A heart attack? Would either of those things have made the woman on the other end of the phone so distressed? They wouldn’t have brought Dwayne across the island on a motorcycle. Camille tightened her fingers on each other, half-wishing she’d retained the habit of saying the rosary. Dwayne took a corner at speed, and sent a chicken wildly squawking out of their path. Camille spat out a feather, and prayed.

On arriving at the villa, the first thing Camille became aware of was shouting. She was out of the sidecar almost before Dwayne had fully stopped; she took the steps two and three at a time. Mentally she ran through a list of possibilities. No gunshots — had the ammunition already run out? Was a gun never involved? She half-stumbled on the topmost stair.

“Saint-Marie Police!” The mousy-haired man swerved to look at her, and nearly got a glass in the head for his trouble. “Where’s Richard?”

Camille heard a distressed wail from the verandah, and rapidly decided to let the two men shouting at each other across the bar kill each other if they were so inclined.

“ _Putain de merde_ — Richard!” Camille dropped to her knees in the middle of the crime scene. He could scold her for contaminating the evidence later ( _oh, please let him scold her for contaminating the evidence later._ )

“Please,” the blonde woman was saying between her sobs, “please, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Towels.” Camille pressed the palm of her hand against the wound. At least they’d left the ice pick in his shoulder (less damage, less tearing, less blood loss), but Jesus. It had gone in more than once. And they’d been aiming for the heart. “Jesus, Richard.” She put her other hand to his wrist, and found his skin cold, clammy with sweat. “Can you hear me, Richard? _Merde_. Richard — sir — Richard, I…”

"Ah, Camille." It was barely audible, but it was something. "Good... wanted to ask you... Stendhal..."

Camille found the book to her left, a perfectly ordinary paperback edition. " _Le rouge et le noir_? If you wanted to practice your French, Richard, that's not the place to start."

"Important..."

"What's important? Richard? Yes, of course it's important, we can start a book club, I promise, Richard..."

“I brought the towels.”

“Good.” She reached up her hand for the small stack of dishcloths. “Get something to cut one up with; we need to get one into strips. And blankets, if there are any in the house.” The woman’s face was tear-swollen, uncomprehending. “He’s in shock, he’ll be cold.” Camille pressed her lips together. The very idea of Richard Poole being cold on Saint-Marie…!

“Eh, eh, eh!” Dwayne’s voice from the sitting room might as well have been from another world. “What’s all this, now?”

The pulse in his throat was faint under her fingers, but still there. “My standard for good news,” muttered Camille under her breath, “is dropping by the minute. Richard…” One of the dishcloths had a small hole in it; Camille decided not to wait for a pair of scissors, and tore at it, with her teeth and then her nails. Feeling and hearing it tear was oddly satisfying.

“Richard,” said Camille, as she knotted the ends of her makeshift bandaging together, “I’m not very good at this, especially as you hate small talk almost as much as you hate clichés. But don’t… don’t do this, don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die on me.” She could feel herself shaking, and hated herself for it. Rapidly she blinked back tears. “A collapsed lawn chair, a broken tea cup, a French novel… just your sort of clues, Richard…” She pressed her hand to his chest, over the folded towels, the shirt growing stiff with blood.

“I brought blankets,” said the blonde woman, “though our legal obligation…”

“I don’t care about the cleaning fees; give them to me.”

“No, I know, I just… I’m sorry, I think it’s the shock, I… I’m a lawyer, and… oh, God, is he going to be all right?”

Camille took a deep breath through her nose. The tang of blood was strong, sickening. “I don’t know.” 

“Oh,” sobbed the other woman, “oh, oh.”

“None of that, now!” bellowed Dwayne. As if the command were directed at her, the woman gasped, sniffled, and stopped crying. Beneath them, the ambulance siren sounded.

“You can go meet them,” said Camille, without taking her eyes off the inspector’s face. “Tell them a man’s been stabbed; tell them he’ll need oxygen; show them where to come. Go!” The woman made a whimpering noise, and ran. Camille let out a shaking breath. “I’m sorry,” she said to Richard. “She’s your friend, and I wasn’t very nice to her.” Camille swallowed. “I don’t think she was involved in this. Call it a hunch, if you like. God, I wish you looked even slightly annoyed at me. What am I going to do without you looking annoyed at me? Richard…”

“You can get out of the way, miss,” said a deep voice behind her, and Camille obeyed, unfolding herself to her full height, relinquishing pressure against the dishtowel last. _What are his chances? How much blood has he lost? Have we done enough? Have I done enough? Is he going to die?_

“Right,” said the man with the resonant bass, “this will do till we get him to the ambulance. One, two — ” One of Richard’s hands fell from the edge of the stretcher, and Camille experienced the momentary, insane desire to grab for it. The second paramedic replaced it, and they moved away.

“You are both under arrest and you can sit _right_ down!” said Dwayne, and Sergeant Bordey wiped her hands on her shorts, pulled out her handcuffs, and prepared to make an arrest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The edition of _Le rouge et le noir_ that Richard has isn't quite an ordinary paperback; it's one with essays and a scholarly introduction, because of course it is: https://www.librairiedialogues.fr/livre/15803198-le-rouge-et-le-noir-stendhal-flammarion.
> 
> So now you know that I am the type of fic writer who looks up book editions (and that Richard made this very in-character edition choice.)


	3. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the most part, I'm not transcribing accents -- I assume readers know how the characters talk. I'm marking Dwayne's speech selectively when it seems important for emphasis.
> 
> This is a bit of a placeholder chapter for those familiar with the episode, I realize, but it explores the psychology of the visitors a bit more, as well as showing team dynamics.

Camille found the sitting room looking as though it had been through no worse than a drunken brawl. 

“Disorderly Conduct an’ Breach of the Peace,” said Dwayne, exasperation and disgust in his voice. “Both of them.”

“Right,” said Camille briskly. “What’s your name?”

“Roger,” stammered the man. “Roger Sadler.”

“Right. Roger Sadler, I arrest you on charges of disorderly conduct and causing a breach of the peace, You do not have to say anything; it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, evidence you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be used as evidence against you.” His wrists looked pale and fleshy in the cuffs. “And I’d enjoy doing it,” added Camille.

“This one is James Moore,” explained Dwayne contemptuously, gesturing with his suspect’s wrists. “His wife’s on the sofa.”

“Right,” said Camille again. The woman on the sofa sat with her head bowed and her hands in her lap; her mascara had run. There was blood on her hands — less than on Camille’s own. Camille glanced over to the sliding doors leading to the verandah. Angela Birkett hovered there, wringing her hands. “Were you a witness to what happened, Ms.…?”

“Angela Birkett. And yes, yes I was, but I don’t understand…” She began to cry again. “Richard l-loved her!”

Well. That was an interesting piece of evidence. “We’ll take a formal statement later,” said Camille, attempting to sound reassuring. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” said the woman on the sofa in a monotone. “I went to offer him a cocktail and he — he assaulted me and I panicked — I had the ice pick in my hand — ”

“Sasha,” said her husband, “I would advise you not to say anything without a solicitor present. We don’t know what these people…” Dwayne’s eyebrow climbed, and James Moore’s voice died away.

Camille took a step towards him. “What I am going to do,” she said, “as the senior officer present, is to telephone the Commissioner of Police and inform him that one of his officers has been attacked. What I am going to do is to telephone my colleague in Honoré and have him drive up here and take you all to the station. Ms. Birkett may ride in the sidecar with Dwayne,” she added, and was rewarded with a whimper. “I’m going to call a taxi and go to the hospital. Inspector Poole may be able to make a statement.” Dwayne glanced sharply at her, and she shook her head slightly; she assessed this group as unlikely to be medically savvy. Camille took out her mobile. “We can then decide what charges to press.”

“It was self-defense…” began Sasha tearfully.

“Sasha!” said her husband.

“Richard wouldn’t…”

“Quiet!” They all turned to look at Dwayne.

“Commissioner, this is Sergeant Camille Bordey speaking.” She was relieved that her voice didn’t shake. “There’s been an incident at Hilltop Villas. Richard Poole has been taken to hospital. Dwayne and I have made arrests. We’ll need Fidel up here with the Land Rover. Do I take it that I have your approval for this? Very good, Commissioner. Thank you, Commissioner. Yes, sir.” She ended the call, dialed again.

“Fidel?” Camille cleared her throat. “Fidel, we — we’ve arrested a couple of brawlers and we’re going to need you to take them down to the station with a suspect for questioning. Dwayne will bring the witness. Yes, I know; I have the Commissioner’s approval for you to leave the station. …No, he — there’s been an incident. We don’t know. We don’t know. Goodbye, Fidel.” She rang off quickly, before her voice broke, before she began to cry. Camille took a deep breath.

“You haven’t charged me yet,” said the woman on the couch, whose name was Sasha, whom Richard loved. “What charges do you intend to prefer?”

“That remains to be seen,” said Camille coolly. “Attempted murder of a police officer, perhaps?”

“You can’t make those threats.”

“I am not threatening you; I am answering a question. It could be assault with intent to wound, it could be murder. It’s far too early to tell.”

“It’s p-perfectly legal, Sasha,” said Angela Birkett, an unexpected ally. “In view of the — the incident they need to question you. And they can legally keep us for questioning without charges for up to 24 hours. Or 36,” she added, “if it’s a serious crime, which of course we hope it isn’t because it’s Richard and, well…” She trailed off rather helplessly, but Camille was impressed by this glimpse of localized competence.

“Thank you, Ms. Birkett. You see? All perfectly legal and — what is the English expression? — above board.” Camille smiled, and Sasha shrank back against the sofa. 

Together, for what seemed a long time, they waited. The rumble of the Land Rover preceded by a few moments Fidel’s feet on the stairs.

“Sergeant Best,” said Camille quickly, before her younger colleague could speak, “thank you. Mr. Sadler and Mr. Moore will be accompanying you to the station. You can escort Mrs. Moore downstairs. Ms. Birkett, with us.”

Fidel opened his mouth, shut it again, and put his hands on the unresisting Sasha’s shoulders. A strange and solemn little procession they made, down the long staircase and away from the sound of the sea. Camille couldn’t help wondering how the stretcher-bearers managed the corners. Angela Birkett, with unexpected initiative, climbed into the motorcycle sidecar and began fastening her helmet straps. Roger Sadler stumbled getting into the van, and Camille let him. When the three of them had shut the doors on their suspects, Fidel turned to her.

“The Chief?”

Camille folded her arms. “I don’t — they stabbed him. They stabbed him, Fidel. I’m going to the hospital… _merde_.”

“What?”

Camille ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t order a taxi.”

Dwayne sucked his teeth. “When was the last time you hung onto a man on a motorcycle?”

Despite everything, Camille smiled. “I’ve led a very sheltered life, Dwayne.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Good thing, too, isn’t it? Thank you, Fidel.” To her surprise, he saluted her before climbing behind the wheel of the Land Rover.

“I’ll drop you off in de town,” said Dwayne. “You can get a taxi from there.”

“I’ll put the call in,” said Angela Birkett, surprisingly. “Er — the firm gave us a number, and I’m not, er, holding onto a motorcycle.”

Camille climbed onto the back of the saddle, rested her head against the solidity of Dwayne’s back and breathed in his scent: spices and sweat and old-fashioned cologne. “All right,” she said. “Let’s break the speed limit.”


	4. The Wait

Camille strode up to the central reception desk. “Saint-Marie Police. Sergeant Camille Bordey, I’m here about DI Richard Poole.”

“I’m sorry, I…” 

“He must have had identification on him. He's that sort of man,” added Camille, half to herself. “Emergency case, brought in from Hilltop Villas, perhaps a little under an hour ago.”

“Let me just check our records. You’re not related, or...?”

Camille swallowed hard. “I am his junior officer and this could become a murder inquiry.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I need to know how he is, and my team is going to need updates.”

The receptionist nodded, nervous. “I’ll… I’ll get word to the operating theatre.”

Camille sighed. “Yeah. Thanks,” she added. She dropped her eyes to the woman’s name badge. “Ruth. Thank you, Ruth.”

“Of course. I hope your friend is all right.” 

_He’s not. He’s not. He’s not._ “Yes, well,” said Camille, “I hope so too.”

The area where she was directed to wait was painted sage green. Camille passed bays in purple and blue and brick red; and she sat against sage green walls. She knew that the coffee in the vending machine would be terrible. She reflected that it might be fun to cheat the one holding crisps and chocolate on behalf of the children working in coloring books at their mother’s knees. Were they waiting for their father? A grandparent? God forbid, a sibling? No, the mother would be in bits if that were the case. Camille sighed. _Next of kin._ What about Richard’s parents?

She couldn’t help feeling that Richard had put her at an unfair disadvantage, giving her incomplete information, _He has a mother who dances, but not like mine. She cut his toast into tin soldiers. He has a father who’s proud of him, but won’t say it; who wanted some other career for Richard, or perhaps some other sort of son, less pedantic or less particular or less prickly. He had caravan holidays in Clacton, but was sent away to boarding school._ Could she telephone those parents? Would they come? What would they be like? 

“Richard Poole? Saint-Marie Police?”

Camille stood up. “Yes? Is there news?”

The young man’s face creased in sympathy. “No, it’s just — we have his things.”

Camille stretched out her hand for the plastic bag. “He’s… in surgery?”

“Yes. I — I don’t know anything more, I…”

“It’s fine,” lied Camille. She could hear the exhaustion in her own voice. “Thank you.” He turned on a rubber sole and fled.

True to form, Richard Poole had his identifying papers in the inside breast pocket of his dark suit jacket. The line for an emergency contact was left blank, without even an erasure or a hesitant pencil mark. Ridiculous man; she’d take that up with him later, if she got the chance. In his defense, the Pooles whose number was listed under next of kin were aging parents in a different time zone. Camille sighed. She wouldn’t want a hospital orderly calling Cathérine from halfway across the world either. Camille typed in the phone number thoughtfully. Even looking up the local code wouldn’t tell her what kind of house they lived in, whether they could afford a fresh coat of paint, whether it had been Richard’s childhood home, whether there were pictures on the walls of Richard as a child, as a bony schoolboy, as a student. 

“Sergeant Bordey?”

“Commissioner.” Camille stood up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…” She cleared her throat. “I was just… getting the nerve up to call his parents.”

The commissioner pursed his lips, nodded. “A difficult situation.”

“Yes. And I’m sorry about earlier; I know you hate leaving the station empty of staff, but…”

“I went down there myself.”

“Oh.”

“I thought,” said Commissioner Patterson, “that an armed assault on my senior police officer qualified as an emergency.”

“Yes,” said Camille. “I mean — thank you.” She cleared her throat; this didn’t seem to be going as planned. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to call in an inspector from London?”

“No.”

“…No?” Camille pinched the skin on the inside of her elbow, trying to give herself something to focus on; surely she must be in shock, surely that was why the commissioner wasn’t making sense.

“I hope that I’ve learned my lesson there.” Camille nodded, attempting to look intelligent. “Naturally we will want to devote our best resources to this problem. But why bring in a stranger when I have a competent and experienced officer in charge… Acting Inspector?”

“Oh,” said Camille, rather blankly.

“With Sergeant Best having received promotion, and your suspects, as I understand it, already in custody, it should be possible for you to lead the investigation, although of course if you need assistance…”

“Ah, no. That is, yes, I — I apologize, sir, but yes. It would be an honor.”

“Good.” As so often, Camille found herself wondering if Commissioner Patterson ever envisioned the possibility of people disagreeing with him.

“I can… come back to the station.”

“That will not be necessary.” The Commissioner rocked slightly on his heels. “Dwayne and Fidel have things well in hand. And someone, after all, needs to be here.”

“Yes.”

“Carry on, Inspector.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Camille watched his retreating back thoughtfully. Then she looked at the card in her hand. _If London is four hours ahead, they can be here tomorrow if I call now. It will be late in London: the number on the card will ring a phone at half past 10 (after a jigsaw or the last cup of tea or a nice murder on the television) and things will never be quite the same afterwards._ Camille took a deep breath, and dialed the number.

“Good evening, is that — no, I don’t have the wrong number. Mr. Poole speaking? Yes, I know it is very late. Camille Bordey of the Honoré police force, in Saint-Marie.” On the other end of the line was only silence. “I’m at the hospital.” She had decided on this as the least ambiguous, the least catastrophic fact. “I’m waiting for Richard to come out of surgery; there’s been… No, sir, it wasn’t an accident. We don’t know that as yet, but I thought that I should telephone in order to apprise you of the situation. I am not proceeding on medical advice.” Something about the clipped, interrogative tones seemed to demand that she use phrases like ‘apprise you of the situation’ and ‘proceeding on medical advice.’ “If you come down, of course, you could be assured of accommodation at… yes, I know it’s a long way. Yes, I know it’s very late. I’m sorry to worry you, and of course I will call you again first thing. Yes. Yes. Good night, sir.”

Camille exhaled. Assuredly, never would she understand the English.


	5. The Hospital

There were suspects to be interviewed, there was a crime scene to be examined, and Acting Inspector Camille Bordey sat with her head against a sage green hospital wall, uneasily aware of these things. She took a deep breath, and reviewed the facts. A collapsed lawn chair, a broken teacup, a hysterical woman (she mentally apologized to Dwayne; there really was no other word), and Richard, bleeding on the verandah; Richard, bleeding… Camille shook herself. Then there was that strange half-confession from the woman called Sasha, whom Angela Birkett said that Richard had loved.

_“Come on,” she’d said, “there must be something you’re looking forward to. Don’t tell me that Richard Poole couldn’t think of an excuse to get out of a party; I’ll be very disillusioned.”_

_“Heaven forbid.” It was a small smile, but it changed his face. A few moments they stood looking out to sea, with the palm trees silhouetted against the blue-green sky, the Roast Beef bobbing gently at her moorings. “Sasha,” he’d said at last. “I’m looking forward to seeing Sasha. We were… very close.”_

_“Oooh.”_

_“It wasn’t like that.” Camille had developed a habit of telling herself that his tetchiness was reflexive. “It wasn’t — we weren’t — we read each other’s theses.”_

_“Mm, romantic.”_

_“Well, it was, really, if you insist: it was a gesture of trust. You know how it is, when you’re twenty: you’re figuring things out — or not figuring things out — and engaging with this whole world of ideas, and discovering new things, and…” Richard shrugged his shoulders expressively. “And then you’re trying to articulate your own opinions, your own views, to articulate an argument that other people can respect — that you yourself can respect. And Sasha and I trusted each other with that.”_

_Camille sipped her beer thoughtfully. “But you haven’t stayed in touch.”_

_“Off and on, you know. Not for years, now. I presumed that… that that was what she wanted. It was a friendship of proximity, if you like. Of watching her make tea in her tiny kitchen. Of getting drunk on bad wine after choral concerts. Encouraging each other to spend money we didn’t have on secondhand books. Sitting next to each other on an old sofa, watching Miss Marple or Inspector Morse or… Sitting side by side and never quite touching.” Richard cleared his throat._

_“You were in love with her,” she’d said softly._

_“What do those words mean, Camille?” She had shrugged, and looked away. “Yes and no, perhaps. She was my best friend,” he’d said simply, and the two of them had left it there, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the sound of the sea._

Camille was depressingly aware of the pattern of assault allegations being greeted with incredulity: but surely not _him_ , but surely not like that. It was easy to construct a clichéd narrative about masculine entitlement and thwarted passion culminating in the kind of tragic violence Sasha had described. But it was impossible to imagine that narrative including Richard. Richard! Richard who was so fiercely loyal, and so… It wasn’t that he wasn’t repressed, of course, or that he didn’t feel things strongly, but that he might take an emotionally impulsive action that didn't consist of running away? This, feeling a bit like a traitor to her sex, Camille steadfastly refused to believe.

Camille stood, and stretched, and consciously unclenched her jaw. Time seemed to pass far too slowly, marked out by the progress of a game show on a television playing just loudly enough to be annoying. She took out her phone and called the station.

“Fidel.” She cleared her throat, blinked away the threat of tears. “Please give me some good news.”

“I wish I could.”

“Okay, I’ll settle for some news. What are they saying?”

Fidel’s sigh was audible over the line. “I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t make much sense.”

“ _N’importe._ ”

“The closest I can figure out is that they were all playing some game and the Chief went out on the balcony to read a book. That’s the bit that does make sense.”

“Naturally.”

“I’ll spare you the reconstruction of the barbecue-tending, shall I?”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine.” She massaged her temples. “What about the…” Why, Camille asked herself, did she keep starting to call it a murder? “The incident,” she said. “What about the incident?”

“That’s what just doesn’t fit. Dwayne says that the woman Sasha has half-confessed, but she isn’t talking without a solicitor. I thought she might be protecting someone. But Dwayne says it can’t have been an outsider, yeah? So maybe one of the men, maybe her husband. But the men won’t say what they were fighting about. About whether or not to call us? About getting their story straight?”

“Maybe.”

“But why? They can’t all have been in a conspiracy to kill the Chief.”

Camille sighed. “No, I agree. It doesn’t make sense. Look, Fidel, you’ve done a good job. You’ve run background checks on all of them — police records, finances…?”

“Yes, we’ve done that.”

“Then lock them up and go home. Give Rosie a kiss from me and… and we’ll get back to this in the morning.”

“Right. Thanks, Camille.”

“Of course.”

“He’s not…?”

“Not out of surgery yet. I’ll call you at home if you like — let you know how he is.”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

“Okay. Okay, Fidel. _Prends soin de toi_.” She hung up before he could finish telling her to do the same.

Camille sat and shivered. She was aware of this as a symptom of worry, and she resented it. She alternated between huddling in her chair and walking up and down. Neither freed her of the artificial cheerfulness of the televised game show. Finally, she sighed, decided that she wasn’t contaminating vital evidence, and put on Richard’s suit jacket. When the game show gave way to a soap opera, she didn’t notice.

“Sergeant Bordey?”

Camille shook herself and stood up. “Yes?”

“Mr. Poole is out of surgery and seems to be responding well, so if you want to come back tomorrow and…”

“No.”

“Visiting hours are over and…”

“No.” Camille cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but this is a police inquiry, and I need to obtain information from him as soon as possible. You can call the Commissioner if you like,” continued Camille, playing her trump card, “to confirm that he has put me in charge of this investigation and that I am here in a professional capacity.”

“I — yes,” stammered the young man. “I mean, no, I mean — won’t you come this way, please?” Straightening her shoulders in her borrowed jacket, Camille did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The French Camille uses translates to "Doesn't matter" and "Take care of yourself."


	6. Delirium

Camille sat by the bed and gripped her hands in her lap. In her mind ran an insistent drone of the orderly’s dutiful updates: hypoglycemic shock, loss of oxygen to the brain, serious damage to subscapular musculature, long term effects unknown. Camille’s own brain kept circling back to _loss of oxygen, long term effects unknown._ She cleared her throat, and spoke to distract herself.

“I’m glad you’re still asleep,” she said to her knees. “I think the orderly was impressed by the badge. Maybe not so much by the jacket — unless he thought it was a bold fashion statement, _hein_? I told him that I absolutely needed to speak with you tonight.” She looked up at the man in the bed, pale and still, his body curiously flat under the bedclothes. “What I was really thinking was _he mustn’t wake up alone. I don’t want him to wake up alone._ ”

Camille cleared her throat. “J’ai donné un coup de fil à tes parents. Est-ce que tu m’en veux? Est-ce que tu vas m’en vouloir? Ton père a été assez sévère. C’est un type… c’est un type très Anglais, enfin. Toi aussi t’es un type très Anglais. Et un peu sévère parfois — si, un peu sévère.” 

“Absolutely not,” said Richard Poole distinctly. 

“Richard?” She was on her feet.

“No,” he said. “Will not stand… cannot…”

“Shh,” said Camille, “shh. What cannot stand? Richard?”

“It’s not… it’s not right…”

“You’re safe,” said Camille helplessly. “You’re safe, you’re in hospital…”

“Dead… she’s dead, Sasha…”

“This isn’t Sasha, this is Camille. And no one’s dead, Richard.”

“No, no, she is, they — they killed my best friend and they didn’t — they didn’t care, they covered it up…”

“Shh,” said Camille, and only then thought how unprofessional it was to tell a witness to be quiet. “It’s all right, Richard, it was only a bad dream.”

“I’m right, though.” His eyes were glittering with fever. “I know I’m right.”

 _Of course you do._ “Richard…” said Camille, “Richard, do you know who stabbed you?”

“Oh, yes.” He relaxed visibly against the pillows, as if relieved to be on firm ground. “Oh, yes; it was Sasha.”

“Richard,” said Camille, and bit her tongue to keep back annoyance, “you just said she was dead.”

“Not the real Sasha, the other one.”

“Right.” Camille sighed. “Right. Okay, Richard, we can talk about it again later.” _When some of the drugs have worn off._ “For now, just…” She was surprised to find that she had put her hand over his wrist, more surprised to find that he hadn’t flinched under her touch. Camille stopped moving her thumb. “Just try to rest, okay?”

“You don’t understand, you don’t… you don’t understand, she… she…”

“Richard,” said Camille, “I promise, I will sort this up.”

“Out.”

She let out a breath. “I will sort this out. Okay?” She laid one hand on his good shoulder. “Okay? I promise.”

“Camille.”

“Yes.”

“Camille…” She waited, but nothing else was forthcoming.

“Yes,” she said simply, “but I’m going to let you sleep now. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Yes,” said Richard, “back in the morning. Must be up in good time… wouldn’t do… pajamas…”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” said Camille wryly. “I’ll bring you some. Sleep, Richard.” She waited until the lines in his face relaxed, and then hugged his jacket around her, and left the room.

*

She turned right out of the hospital doors, along the pavement that straggled by the wall, avoiding the ambulance bay… “Dwayne!” Camille took Richard’s jacket from around her shoulders. “I was going to call a cab.”

“An’ you think I let you do that?”

Camille smiled. “Thought you’d have a hot date.” She climbed into the sidecar for the second time that day, grateful for its security.

“Nah. Not tonight.” He looked over at her before kicking up the stand. “How’s the Chief?”

Camille shook her head. “Delirious. Unhappy. Alive.”

“Good enough.” The roar of the motor saved her from having to make further reply.

When she dismounted in front of La Kaz, Dwayne made no comment about the fact that her face was streaked with tears. “Thanks,” she said; “I know it’s been a long day, and… thanks.”

“Any time. You know that.”

She nodded, waved him off into the market. She allowed herself to think that she had navigated the last gauntlet of the day.

“Camille! Mais qu’est-ce que s’est passé?”

“Nothing, Maman.” She insisted on English, on publicity, on keeping this short, nothing that customers couldn’t overhear. 

Cathérine Bordey’s expression was skeptical in the extreme. “Well, you need to drink something. What shall I get you? A glass of water and… rum? Something else?”

Camille sighed. “I think, Maman, that what I would really like is a cup of tea.”

She submitted to having her mother make up a tray, and took it up to her room in near silence. She doctored it with milk and two sugars, drank it slowly, and mentally conceded that Richard might have a point about its restorative powers.

Fidel picked up the phone with Rosie screaming in the background. “Sorry, Camille. It’s bath time — girl got yam all over herself.”

“A woman of taste. Listen, Fidel, I don’t have much news, and there’s…” Camille blew out a breath. “There’s a lot we can’t know right now. He’s a bit delirious, but hopefully we can take his statement tomorrow.”

“Right you are. _Repose-toi bien_ , Camille.”

“Thanks.” She couldn’t promise to rest well; she felt as though she might be a little delirious herself. Richard had been stabbed, and had bled under her hands, and this morning she had been making paper dolls. Camille pressed her fingers into her eyes. She should review the facts, she should write up a report, she should make a plan for what to do tomorrow… She fell asleep without undressing.

In the small hours she awoke, her eyes swollen and her throat dry. Groggily she scrambled out from the sheets. conscious of responsibility forgotten. “Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Camille says (freely translated) is: I rang up your parents. Are you angry at me? Will you be angry at me? Your father was rather severe with me. He’s… he’s a very English type, I suppose. You’re a very English type too, you know. And sometimes a bit severe — yes, you are.” The “si” is because she’s countering his denial in her head.


	7. Harry

Cycling through deserted streets to the beach house brought a space of blessed blankness, and Camille rode surrounded by the mild night, watched over by the kindly stars. She brought her bicycle onto the porch and dropped her satchel in the hall. 

“Hi, Harry.” Camille sighed, and switched on the small light in the kitchen. “I know, I’m probably overreacting. You’re a lizard. You’ll survive without someone to get a mango for you. I’m just…” She waved a self-deprecatory hand. “Eh, Harry, où es-tu?” She found a half mango in the fridge, neatly covered. “That’s Richard all over, isn’t it? An exact half of a mango… Ah, there you are.” The lizard stood on the table, blinking up at her with intelligent-seeming eyes. 

“Well, for one thing,” said Camille, as she mashed up mango in a saucer, “this way I can tell Richard that I’ve been to check up on you. I think he’d worry. Yes, he does tend to do that.” She set the saucer down, and meditatively watched the lizard eat. “You know, you’re almost unnervingly well-socialized. Perhaps it is because members of the Honoré police force talk to you like idiots, _hein?_ ” She straightened up. “Or maybe we’re not idiots. Maybe we’re just lonely.”

Camille massaged the back of her neck, checked the blinking digits on her phone. Almost 3 a.m. She told herself that she should sleep. “No good to anyone in the morning,” she said aloud, and yawned. But she was frustratingly wakeful, every nerve on high alert. She went into the bedroom, pulled an overnight case out from under the bed. 

“Harry,” she called to the kitchen, “this is our secret. If he asks, you think maybe Dwayne took care of it.” Cotton undershirts (really, the man was a masochist), underthings (surely more comfortable than whatever the hospital provided), and pajamas (apparently all of them were blue-striped) went into the bag, followed by a toothbrush, toothpaste, and comb. “Oh, I almost forgot!” She pulled open both of the dresser’s small drawers, and found what she wanted in the left-hand one. “Of course he has a handkerchief drawer,” said Camille under her breath, and put half of its contents into the case.

After checking the time on her phone again, Camille sighed, found her call history, and dialed.

“Hello, this is the Poole residence.”

“Mrs. Poole, this is Camille Bordey, Saint-Marie police… I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh no, dear: I was just having my morning tea. And then, I don’t suppose any of us got much sleep last night. What time is it there?”

“Early. I — I wanted to call as soon as possible. He’s out of surgery, and… and he seems very much like himself.”

“Oh, well, that’s good to hear.” There was a slight pause. “Annoyed you, did he?”

“Mrs. Poole, I didn’t mean…”

“That’s all right, dear. He’s like that, Richard — always does seem to rile people up without meaning to — but I know he thinks very highly of you.”

“Oh,” said Camille, nonplussed. 

“Letters are full of it.”

“Oh,” said Camille again. “Well, I just wanted to call and say… and say he’s recovering.” She breathed in deeply. “I don’t know if you still want to come down. But I thought you should know, yesterday… I thought you should know.”

“It was very kind of you,” said Mrs. Poole. “Richard always did hate being fussed over, but… you’d call if anything were to change, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” said Camille, and wondered what else to say to the gentle voice on the other end of the line. “He says that you dance. Richard. He told me that you dance.”

“Well, in my younger days… Yes,” said Richard’s mother, and Camille thought that she might be smiling, “yes, I suppose I do.”

Camille massaged her temples. “I’ll let you get back to your tea.”

“Goodbye, dear. And thank you.”

“Il n’y a pas de quoi — don’t mention it. Bye.”

Camille sighed, and yawned. Soon the finches and parrots and kingbirds would begin their chatter. Soon the trucks would be on their way to market, a hazard to a weary cyclist. She yawned again. A moment she hesitated, irresolute. Then she stripped, and crawled under the mosquito netting of Richard’s bed, and slept.

*

She woke to the sound of her phone. “Hrm?” said Camille, when she’d reached it. “Detective Sergeant — Inspector Bordey speaking.”

“You get a promotion?”

“Dwayne.” Camille sat up properly and massaged her neck. “Just… just for the duration. The Commissioner made the offer — well, informed me — yesterday. It means we won’t have to deal with another Englishman underfoot.”

“Thank goodness for that.”

“Yes… is anything wrong?”

“No, but it’s 8 o’clock.”

“Oh! Yes, of course, I… I’m at Richard’s.” _I am at this moment naked in his bed._ “I’m going to look around, see if there are any letters, or photos, anything that would help us get a picture of his relationship with the suspects.”

“Right you are.”

“Right… um…”

“I’ll go through the records on the suspects here, shall I?”

“Yes, yes, that would be great, Dwayne.” Camille rang off, extracted herself from the mosquito nets, took a brief shower — why hadn’t he gotten that fixed? — and pulled her clothes back on.

“Âllo?” said a voice outside. “ ’Y a de la poste.” Camille stuck her head around the door onto the verandah. “Pour Monsieur Poole.”

“C’est bon, je m’en charge.” She dutifully signed for the package. “Merci.” The postman smiled, and left, and Camille could do nothing but sincerely hope that the gossip mill would put “incident involving DI Poole” and “police inquiry” together and get “colleagues working around the clock” rather than “detective sergeant emerges from boss’s bedroom toweling her hair.” Camille sighed deeply.

“And don’t you look at me like that,” she said to Harry.


	8. The Parcel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, this is where the investigation of 3x01 needs to go in a different direction, using somewhat different methods and results. Some of the ways they get evidence, and who takes the initiative, have been changed around. Divergence is based partly on my reading of Sadler's character, and partly on my desire to see the team working together. Also, of course, there's the desire not to bore readers who know the episode. There's character development in here too, I promise!
> 
> Let the record show that I have a fairly robust theoretical justification for Sadler's actions as internally consistent. As readers, you're of course more than welcome to disagree! and also to ask me about it if you like.

Arriving at the station, she deposited the box on her own desk. “Post — parcel for Richard from his mother.”

“Good morning to you too,” said Dwayne.

“Should you be opening that?” asked Fidel, but his words were accompanied by the rasp of scissors through packing tape.

“Sorting,” said Camille, putting down the scissors. “Presuming there’s a card, it goes to him at the hospital; if she’s sent socks, they go back to the house; if there’s evidence, we keep it here.” She picked up the card on top of the tissue paper and flipped it over. “I didn’t want to have to tie an open parcel onto the back of my bike.”

“Er, should we be reading the Chief’s mail?”

“It’s a postcard, not a letter, Fidel,” said Camille abstractedly. “Also, it’s evidence. He sent for this, apparently.”

“Mementos?” Dwayne had come to look over her shoulder.

“Apparently,” said Camille again, her brow furrowed. “It explains why I didn’t find photographs of these people at his house.” She smiled at the group photograph with a younger Richard at its edge, his hair light in the sunshine, a manicured lawn impossibly green behind him, a baroque façade bathed in perfect light. Dwayne cleared his throat.

“Right,” said Camille, and turned to the album. “These must be our suspects: Angela as a brunette, Sasha in the middle, Roger too cool to smile for the camera.”

Dwayne sucked his teeth. “And all dressed like that for a dance. Man, I don’t understand the English.”

Camille half-chuckled under her breath, but the next photograph stopped the laughter in her throat. Richard in a bookstore was unsurprising. But Richard off-balance and perhaps a little tipsy was new; Richard smiling, Richard happy, Richard _carefree_ … that was strange, and devastating in its strangeness. What Camille said aloud was: “That must be Sasha.”

Dwayne frowned. “She looks like a nice girl.”

“She does, doesn’t she?” Camille found it impossible to reconcile the girl with wild hair and draped skirts, lace-up boots and a completed dissertation, with the coldly elegant woman who had held an ice pick, and then sat quietly on a sofa while Richard… Camille shook herself. “Fidel,” she said, “does she look like a nice girl to you?”

“Coffee,” said Fidel before answering, and Camille took the mug from him with inarticulate gratitude. “She does.” For a moment all three of them stood over the photo album. “Is that relevant?”

“It shouldn’t be, of course.” Camille rolled her shoulders back. “But it _feels_ relevant.”

“All these women dying they hair,” grumbled Dwayne. “Makes it hard to tell who’s who.”

“And the student fashions,” said Camille with a reminiscent smile. “Anyway. Time to interview the suspects. Dwayne, you handled the men: which first, do you think?”

He stepped conspiratorially away from the hallway leading to the cells; Camille reflected vindictively that the suspects in the cells would be almost certainly be too hungover to eavesdrop in any case. “Roger Sadler,” said Dwayne. “He was angry, but… I don’t think he’s a schemer. No, that’s not it: I don’t think he’d be good at it.” Dwayne closed one eye significantly. “Same as Honest Eddie, if I’m, well, honest. Thinks he’s cleverer than he is.”

“Good. Then let’s start with him.” Fidel cleared his throat, and she turned to him. “Yes?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” He gestured at her. “You maybe want to put a fresh shirt on first?”

“Oh.” Camille put her hands on her hips and let out a shaking breath, unable to find words.

“Hey,” said Fidel, “don’t worry about it. Dwayne and I can review evidence here, you can decide whether you want to intimidate him with Dwayne or pretend to be the mean one while I write things down.”

“Yes,” said Camille. It wouldn’t do to appear in front of a suspect wearing a shirt she’d spent most of the last twenty-four hours in. “Yes.” She squeezed Fidel’s arm on her way out of the station.

Camille was well aware that she would have to undergo an interrogation of her own, and she prepared to meet it with as much grace and guile as she could muster. Cathérine Bordey turned out to be in what her daughter privately thought of as her “indignant hen” mood. Camille protested that she was fine, explained that she had gone out early to feed Harry, dispelled the rumor that Richard had been shot, and slipped on linen trousers and a crisp button-down blouse. She was just congratulating herself when confronted by the fact that she could neither remember when she had last eaten or lie convincingly about it when asked. Having had a croissant pressed into her hand, Camille escaped gratefully back to the station.

“Okay.” She clapped her hands. “Dwayne, with me: I’m hoping that he’ll be embarrassed and anxious to defend himself.”

“Camille, one thing — ”

“What?” She turned to face Fidel. “Am I buttoned wrong?”

“No no, it’s — Dwayne and I found something. Or rather, we didn’t find something — here, look.” She returned to the table with the open photo album. “All four of them went to the same college, right? And we have photos of them all together at dances and on picnics and things. But here’s the graduation photo, and we can’t find Roger Sadler anywhere.”

“Good work.” Camille picked up the glossy photograph and slipped it into a protective sleeve. “Let’s ask him about it.

“Good morning, Mr. Sadler,” said Camille sweetly, when Dwayne had brought him from the cells. Fidel set down a mug of coffee in front of the prisoner before retreating to his desk. “Let’s review the facts, shall we? You are under arrest for disorderly conduct — for fighting while drunk. Like an idiot.” The man dropped his gaze. “Whatever charges or fines you may face for destruction of property are none of our concern. But we are very interested — ” Camille leaned forward and folded her hands on the desk — “in what happened to our colleague. Your friend, supposedly. And we want you to tell us all you know.”

Roger Sadler glanced between the two police officers on the other side of the desk; Camille was grateful for Dwayne’s glowering presence at her shoulder. “What makes you think I can help? I mean, I didn’t see anything, I told this man and your other colleague yesterday…”

“Two things,” said Camille. “First, I would like to think that you cared whether Richard lived or died. Secondly, given the situation, and the indisputable fact that one of the four of you was responsible for what happened, it would be easy to make a legal case for your responsibility as an accessory before or after the fact.”

“ _Very_ easy,” added Dwayne darkly.

“Is that a threat?”

“No,” said Camille quickly, before Dwayne could say yes. “So, you didn’t see anything.”

Roger Sadler shifted on his chair. “No, I was tending the barbecue. I didn’t speak with him because… well, for one thing, RP was never one for small talk, and… look, you might as well know that we’d fallen out rather.”

“I see.” Fidel coughed modestly behind her, and handed her a folded slip of paper. _Sadler never took his degree from Cambridge._ “And this was connected to your getting kicked out — I’m sorry, I don’t know the English idiom — from university?”

“Kicked out is very strong language,” said Sadler defensively, but his shoulders slumped. “I didn’t finish.”

“Richard reported you,” said Camille. The man himself would have been aghast at her treatment of intuition as fact, but the story he’d told her about a bully in school made her suddenly certain that she was speaking no less than the truth. “Richard knew that you were cheating — ” what else could it be, to be expelled? — “and as a result you were… I’m sorry, what is the phrase?”

Sadler bit his lips. “Sent down,” he said tightly. “The phrase is ‘sent down.’ And yes, my god, if I had had the chance to have a go at him back then, he might have ended up with a kink in that Roman nose of his. I’d probably have been done for drunk-and-disorderly then too.” He half-chuckled ruefully. “But we’re both solidly middle-aged now and, well, we’re different people. He may be a pedant, Richard, but he’s not a prick. I was surprised, he was actually… he was pretty decent. And I may be a chancer,” said Roger Sadler, “but I’m no murderer.”

Camille looked at him. "It wasn't murder."

“Well, but — ” said Roger Sadler, and shut his mouth sharply. “Look,” he resumed, “ask Angela. Angela, poor girl, worshiped him. I don’t mean that he — that she — it’s all of a piece, really; she’s never really moved on from university, if you ask me. But ask Angela. You saw her, you heard her, after the…accident.” Camille raised an eyebrow. “She’ll give you eyewitness testimony that I was in that room, or at the barbecue, the whole time.”

Camille and Dwayne conferred wordlessly. “Let’s say we believe you,” said Dwayne. “So tell me: what happened that led to you an’ a friend throwing glassware at each other while the Chief was bleeding out on the deck?”

Sadler straightened. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that you’ll have to ask James that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very little bit of sleuthing revealed that the group photo in the episode (from Ben Miller's own university days?) was taken at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, which also supports Richard's earlier assertion to Camille that his college is one of England's oldest: https://www.pet.cam.ac.uk/. Loyalty impels me to say that Oxford is older than Cambridge, though -- if we're counting!


	9. The Hospital (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains spoilers for an unnamed Agatha Christie novel -- meaning that details of the plot are revealed which you'll recognize if you've read it, and if you haven't, you will know the big plot twist of one Agatha Christie novel, but you won't know which. That particular one is one of my favorites, which I believe to be well worth reading even if, at some future date, you find yourself thinking that you know something most of the characters don't...

“I hate to say it,” Dwayne said, once Sadler was back in his cell, “but I believe him.”

Camille shrugged. “He’s hiding something, but so do I.”

“If we compare it with hypothetically similar cases…” Fidel stammered into silence.

“Go on, Sergeant.”

“Then it doesn’t make sense,” Fidel said, blushing. “I mean: he may not be a very good estate agent, but murdering a police officer isn’t going to get him out of debt. And — I’ve been looking his business up on the internet — ”

“The boy’s keen,” interjected Dwayne.

“He may be in trouble,” said Fidel, “but he’s not in legal trouble. No dodgy deals on property, no police investigations, so even if, hypothetically, the Chief had inside information…” He trailed off. “It makes no sense.”

Camille pinched the bridge of her nose. “No. I think we need to talk to him. I’ll go up.” Absently she caressed the leather binding of his journal. Richard and his papers: his crosswords, his printout of _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_ … Dwayne cleared his throat. “I’ll take this,” said Camille. “If there’s anything we need in it, I prefer to let him tell us.”

“Definitely.” Fidel looked horrified at the possibility of an alternative.

“Well done on the university record, Fidel. What I’d like you two to do is to take statements from the Moores — James and Sasha. Let them think that Roger has said something that helps them. I don’t want them to put him under pressure; best if they think that he’s on their side.”

“Devious.”

“I’m a little worried that you think of that as a compliment, Dwayne.” Camille smiled wearily at her friends. A moment they stood together, linked by touch. Camille knew that they could feel her shaking. “I’d better go to the hospital,” she said, and extracted herself.

* * *

Camille entered the hospital room and deposited her satchel by her chair. “Hey,” she said. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh in relief or cry. She was terribly afraid she might do both. Richard smiled, and she tried to do the same.

Almost guiltily she put the card on his nightstand. “A card from your mother. The parcel arrived,” she added in explanation. “We — I decided to use the album as evidence, but I promise not to read your journal. I brought that too, actually.”

“I… thank you.” He didn’t look particularly grateful, but Camille decided to count herself lucky.

“Do I want to know how you’re feeling?”

“Probably not.”

“Dwayne and Fidel send their love.”

“…Do they?”

Camille blew out her exasperation. “You know what I mean. They care about you. And they were worried. If you insist on precision — ” his eyebrows asked why he would accept anything less — “Dwayne said to give you his best, and Fidel said that they all hope you start feeling better soon.”

“Hm.”

Camille spread her hands. “All right, I’m just telling you what they said.”

“Um,” said Richard, moistening his lips, “I gather… that you were here yesterday.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t have said whether she was glad or sorry that he didn’t remember.

“I didn’t… I didn’t offend you, did I, Camille?”

“What?”

“I… I do that sometimes, I know. Without…” He began to cough, a spasm only briefly interrupted by a breath taken in through his teeth.

“ _Calme-toi_ ,” said Camille without thinking, and got to her feet. There was a cup on the bedside table with a square straw, and this she took. “Lie still.” One hand on his sound shoulder was enough to reinforce this command. “There.” His eyelids fluttered briefly, but he didn’t manage to glare at her before taking the straw. And Camille stood over him, and marveled at her own feelings. It was one thing, surely, to feel a _tendresse_ for this man, who probably would have scoffed at the word if he knew it. It seemed quite another to stand next to him, ashen and in a hospital gown, and to feel as though it was her natural and desired place. Richard relaxed against the pillow, and Camille shook herself out of her reverie. 

“Better?” He nodded minutely. “Good. You didn’t offend me, Richard.” He looked at her, his eyes full of hope, still breathing hard, and Camille felt her heart turn over. She sat back down, and said: “I’ve been to see Harry.”

“Oh. Crucial witness, is he?”

“Stop it.” She found herself smiling, despite everything. “I fed him mango. Don’t speak. I’m just telling you, not asking for thanks. And you need to save your breath.” He met her eyes, and she held them, and she wondered what he would say, if she allowed him to speak; she wondered what she herself would say in response. She tried not to watch his quickened breath; she tried not to think about the remembered weakness of his pulse.

Camille cleared her throat. “Are you… are you all right to answer a few questions?” A quick, one-cornered smile accompanied his nod. “Okay.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I think we need to work backwards.”

“Away from the zero point.” His voice was hoarse, but his enthusiasm was familiar, the same approbation she’d heard dozens of times standing next to the Land Rover or in the middle of a crime scene.

“Yes, Inspector,” said Camille, with slight emphasis, and glanced up to be rewarded by his amusement. She took a deep breath, and gripped her pen more tightly. “Can you tell me what you remember about the incident itself?” She was proud of herself for barely hesitating over the word.

“Not very much, I’m afraid.” He grimaced. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting it. A confrontation, quite possibly, some kind of conversation, almost certainly, but not…” He moistened his lips, and Camille held her breath, afraid of putting words in his mouth, afraid of making things worse. “It was the ice pick, wasn’t it, the weapon?”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” Camille waited. “It was strange, you know. Hard to realize. They all still referred to her as Sasha, you see, and then there was the Stendhal…. It’s like the Agatha Christie,” he said.

“What, Richard?”

“The one with the wrong sister. It was the wrong one who died, the one with the inheritance.”

“But that doesn’t make sense — why would someone want to murder someone _without_ an inheritance?”

“That’s just it.” His eyes welled up. “Just — just a stupid accident and she — they treated it like an opportunity.”

“I’m sorry, Richard, you’ve lost me.” She looked down at the notebook in her lap, knowing that he would hate for her to see the tears that he would think of as a weakness. “And for the record, I really hate my job right now.”

“All right,” said Richard, just audibly.

“When… when Sasha came over to you, what did you do?”

“What did I do? Um… grabbed for the ice pick, I think. Yes… you’ll find my prints, probably.” He paused, and Camille got up to hand him the water again. “You don’t have to…”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Richard.”

“Right,” he said at last. “Better.”

“Okay.” Camille returned to her chair. “The ice pick?”

“Yes, ah, the — the lawn chair overbalanced, and I, I broke the teacup. Shame, really.” Camille bit her lip. “She… she still had the ice pick, and I know I should have called for help, but she got it in again and I couldn’t, I didn’t…”

“Richard,” said Camille, loudly enough to get his attention, “this is not an evaluation of your self-defense skills.” She waited until he met her eyes. “All right? Good. And is there anything you can tell me about what was going on in the other room?”

“Oh,” said Richard, visibly relieved, “charades. Not even very good charades. You see, in the right company, they can be quite erudite, charades, quite mentally engaging, but clues about pie? Hardly.” Camille failed to suppress a smile. “Not helpful? They were all pretty consistently involved: audible, you know, in the room, in each other’s sight-lines. No one… scuttling off to burn incriminating papers or anything like that.”

“Shame.”

“Quite. I don’t know what else… they were all welcoming enough, in a hypocritical sort of way. Angela the least insincere, though she was hardly at her ease. James was the most overtly hostile, but…” He stifled a yawn. “It’s still easiest to think of Sasha as she was, you know, back then… Stendhal…”

“You said you wanted to ask me about Stendhal.”

“I did?”

“Yesterday.” She did not say: _at the villa._ She did not say: _when I thought you were dying._

“Sorry, I don’t…”

“Don’t worry about it. You can tell me when you remember; I’m not going anywhere. But I do need to get on with the case.”

“Understood.”

Camille smiled apologetically, shouldered her satchel. “Oh.” She paused, let out a breath. “I should tell you — I called your parents.” She stood still, waiting for a reproof, a protest that did not come. Finally she turned to face him, and found him regarding her with unsettling steadiness. “They check the weather here, Richard! They worry about you! Your mother — ” she gestured towards the card on the table — “your mother worries about you catching _cold_! In Saint-Marie!”

“Yes,” said Richard.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Yes, they do worry. Yes, I understand.”

Camille nodded. “I promised them I’d keep them informed, you know…”

“Yes.” He smiled faintly. “I will ring them, when… when I can make a more convincing job of talking.”

“Good. Richard…” He waited, but she shook her head, dismissing whatever else she might have said. “Thank you for understanding. I should go.”

“Carry on then, Sergeant.”

She saluted with what she hoped was convincing jauntiness, and left the room.


	10. Angela

Camille called the station on her way to the vehicle. “Anything to report?”

“They’ve gone,” said Fidel. “Very much the ‘offended British subject,’ though. He was ranting about a solicitor and she was wearing enormous sunglasses.”

Camille sighed. “Right. Listen, I’m going to stop by the hotel and interview Angela. I’ll tape it; I think she’ll relax more if not dealing with uniformed officers. If Dwayne says anything about a woman-to-woman talk, throw a pen at him.”

“You got it.”

Camille climbed into the Land Rover and sat, for some minutes, with her forehead against the wheel. She wondered if she was running a temperature. She wondered what to say to Angela, Angela who had never moved on from university, according to Roger Sadler, and who was the most genuinely friendly of the group, according to Richard. Camille put the keys in the ignition. 

She found Angela Birkett in the hotel’s open-air lounge, looking distinctly unhappy. “Bonjour,” said Camille, and exhibited her badge. “Is it all right if we talk here?” 

“Please.” Angela smiled tremulously, and gestured to the straw chair opposite her own. “You’ll think me heartless — being here, I mean — but it seemed better than being alone.”

“Of course.” Camille was surprised by a waiter bending over her to hand her a long menu.

“I was just going to have something to drink. It’s so warm,” added Angela vaguely. “You’ll join me?”

Camille murmured a tactful assent, but failed entirely to make a choice between the elaborately named concoctions on the menu. “It doesn’t matter,” she said to the waiter in French, smiling and hoping that Angela didn’t speak it. “Whatever you want to use up.”

“I know this is a difficult time,” said Camille, “but…”

“Have you been to see Richard today?”

“Yes.” There was no point in pushing the woman, or she might break down entirely. “Yes, he seems…” _tired, distant, alive_ … “better.”

“Oh, that _is_ good news.” Angela spoke breathlessly; Camille worried that she might resume weeping at any moment. “Yesterday was so _horrible_ and the worst thing was not _knowing_ anything and…”

“Yes,” said Camille. “Yes, and we’re very grateful for all your help.” This formula seemed to do its work, as Angela brightened slightly. “It’s all right if I record our conversation? Thank you. Now, to begin with, can you tell me whose idea it was to come to Saint-Marie?”

“Oh!” said Angela. Why, Camille asked herself irritably, did the woman seem perpetually startled? “I suppose… I booked the holiday, but I’m sure that one of the others mentioned it. Maybe Roger had a brochure from a colleague, or… or perhaps this was where Sasha had her procedure?”

“Her procedure?”

“Oh! Well, I suppose I’m not supposed to mention it really, only — you won’t tell her, will you, it really isn’t in the least important, only I do think it’s silly not to be content with what you look like, isn’t it? Of course that wouldn’t be something you would worry about, and Sasha was always beautiful. Alluring,” added Angela, not without bitterness. “Still, you never know, do you?”

_I never will, at this rate._ “Know what, Ms. Birkett?”

“Oh, about the plastic surgery.”

“Ah.” Camille made a note. “I can look that up.”

“Oh. Oh yes. Well.”

Camille resisted the urge to rub her temples, and was grateful when the arrival of the juice gave her a moment to sort through the information she’d received. “And so Richard’s presence was a happy coincidence.”

“Mm.” Angela Birkett did not look up from the glass in her hands.

Camille leaned forward. “And, in confidence, that was… fine? Everyone in the group was happy to see him?”

“Well, I suppose — that is — ” Angela’s shoulders slumped. “Roger seemed pleased, in his schoolboyish sort of way. James… James made a big thing of it, but he and Richard ended up quarreling. Richard said it was just because he insisted on leaving a tip, but…”

“But?” prompted Camille, when her witness fell silent.

“Well, it must have been about Sasha, mustn’t it?” Camille tried to look politely expectant. “I thought that after so long… that things would have changed. That they would all be settled enough not to mind, about Sasha having married James instead.”

“Instead!”

“Instead of Richard,” said Angela, unperturbed. “And she and Richard were always such great friends, I really thought that she’d put him at his ease, you know, but she…” Angela sniffed. “She was very cool, very reserved. And Richard still…”

Camille swallowed. “Still…?”

“Well, he obviously still had feelings for her. He brought her the book and everything.”

“The book was a present?”

“Well… I’m not sure.” Angela took refuge in her juice cocktail, and Camille prayed for patience. “But he definitely made a point of showing it to her.”

Camille made another note, feeling as though she was dealing with one of Richard’s paradoxes. A book that was a present and not a present, a teacup, a bowl… “What was in the bowl?”

“The bowl?”

“On the verandah.”

“Oh! Crisps, I think.”

“Thank you.” Camille took a deep breath. “Now, I know this is difficult, but can you tell me everything you remember seeing and hearing at the time of the incident?” Angela Birkett shrank back into her chair. “For instance,” suggested Camille gently, “were Richard and Sasha talking beforehand or not? Were they walking around, or was one of them sitting down? Did you hear raised voices? Did something happen beforehand that might have a bearing…?”

“Ohhh.” It was a shuddering breath. “It was awful. Sasha went out to take him the crisps and, and… Richard was sitting down, he was reading his book. And Sasha leaned over to say something, I think, and he looked up, and then…” Angela shivered.

“Did Richard… reach out to keep her on the balcony, maybe, or…”

“No!” wailed Angela. “I would have seen! I would have noticed! James was being a scuba diver, but they…” She dropped her eyes to the tablecloth. “I always noticed what Richard was doing,” she said in a small voice, and Camille found herself believing her.

“Thank you,” said Camille. She sipped her papaya juice, and wondered what she was missing. “I don’t suppose you know what James and Roger fought about?”

Angela shook her head. “They… the lawn chair went down with a crash, and I think Richard shouted, and then there was so much blood. I… I’m afraid I ran away.”

“But you called us.”

“Yes,” said Angela, “from the front steps, where I knew there would be signal. I just mean… I didn’t go to Richard. He was in danger and I didn’t go to him.”

Camille sighed. “You did the right thing.” What else, after all, could she tell the poor woman? “You acted quickly enough to save his life.”

Angela smiled shakily. “He will be all right, then?”

Camille stood up, and pocketed her recorder. About this she was in no mood to lie. “There’s a great deal we don’t know,” she said curtly; seeing Angela Birkett’s face, she added: “But he’s not dead.”


	11. Clues

Camille forced herself to jog up the steps to the station. “All right, Dwayne, Fidel: what do we have?” 

“A whole lotta paperwork,” said Dwayne, rubbing his eyes.

“Histories,” added Fidel.

“Good, let’s have them.”

Dwayne binned the sandwich wrappers on their desks on his way to the whiteboard, as if clearing the decks for action. “Right. I got the secretary at Angela Birkett’s law firm before she went home for the day. After I chatted with her a bit — ” Camille raised her eyebrows — “she confided that Ms. Birkett doesn’t seem to have had a steady boyfriend at all, these last eight years. Dedicated to work? I suggested, but no, she say it’s more like she just isn’t interested in dating. Bit of a thing for the Chief, you think?”

Camille rubbed her neck. “All the evidence points that way. I just don’t see how it’s relevant to what happened. All right, what about the others?”

“The Moores.” Fidel takes over the marker. “Married just after university. Worth a lot of money, the two of them. Sasha owned a tech company — sold before the bubble a few years ago. They moved to Spain seven years ago, apparently on the profits.”

“So they haven’t seen much of the others since?”

“It seems not.”

Camille ran a hand through her hair, started forward, found herself a little dizzy, leaned against her desk. “But where does that get us?” she asked. Fidel shrugged. “If it were a mystery about them…” She thought back to the turquoise night on Richard’s porch, when she had teased him about being called in to clear up an unsolved and invisible mystery. And now he was in hospital, and she could still smell his blood on her hands.

Dwayne spoke. “When was the last time you ate something?” 

“Why do people keep asking me that?” muttered Camille without thinking.

“Because you come in this morning in yesterday’s shirt, and treated this morning’s croissant like stale bread.”

“Dwayne, I didn’t mean…”

“And you didn’t have lunch,” he added, with emphasis.

“I didn’t…” Camille pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I’ll make tea,” said Fidel.

“Why?” said Camille, when he’d returned. “Why Richard? Why here? Why _now_?”

“That’s a good point,” said Dwayne. “Why not just go down to the beach house? Slip down late at night, go in through the kitchen or jam up the latch, and — bam! In the morning, robbery gone wrong and the Chief lying — ”

“Yes, thank you, Dwayne,” said Camille.

“They could even set fire to the place, eliminate evidence.”

Camille sighed. “Yes. Yes, you’re right; that would have been easier.” Her throat seemed to close up, protesting the need to voice this alternate possibility. She would have been the first to find him, to come over the hill in the Land Rover and see…

“So it needed to be then,” said Fidel. 

“Yes,” said Camille. “Yes, good — follow that up.”

Fidel cleared his throat. “They thought he was threatening them. Or one of them thought he was threatening them. Do we think they were all in on it?”

“No,” said Camille and Dwayne in unison.

Fidel ran a hand vigorously over his head. “Roger Sadler we’ve had, and it doesn’t make sense. He has a good life, a wife, kids — no motive. Angela Birkett…” Fidel’s marker hovered irresolutely a few inches away from the whiteboard. “She was fond of the Chief, and she called us, and I don’t think she could pull off a bluff like that.”

“She might have snapped,” suggested Dwayne half-heartedly. “Gone mad with frustrated passion? No, I don’t believe it either.”

“Which leaves us with James and Sasha,” said Camille, stretching in her chair. “But everything seems wrong, somehow! A _crime passionnel_ … with Richard?” Dwayne poorly stifled a guffaw. “Angela Birkett said that Sasha married James instead of marrying the inspector, but even if we believe that…”

“That would mean that the Chief would be the one motivated to kill for the woman he had always loved,” said Fidel. “Which makes even less sense. Obviously. And I can’t believe the assault theory.”

“Angela’s story seems to go against it too,” said Camille. “Roger called it an accident, and lied. We’ll need medical evidence — which reminds me, Fidel, make a note to call the clinic and see if they have a record of Sasha Moore there. Angela Birkett thinks she had a procedure done here.” Camille glanced at the clock. “But that can wait for tomorrow.”

“Fresh in the morning,” said Dwayne, without much optimism. 

“Come to dinner,” said Fidel. “I’m serious. It’s no trouble. Juliette’s roasting a chicken — and she always says she doesn’t get enough conversation.”

Camille sighed, and looked at Fidel, smiling over his generous offer; at Dwayne, already eager to accept it; and she did not have the heart to gainsay them. “On one condition,” she said, “and that is that I bring beer from La Kaz.”

Fidel, touchingly in Camille’s view, telephoned ahead from the police station, and was wielding a dishrag when she and Dwayne arrived in the Land Rover.

“Juliette,” said Camille, “this is very kind.”

“Not at all — and flowers, Dwayne, how nice!” He bowed as he handed them over; Rosie emitted a high-pitched shriek. “She’s excited,” said Juliette wearily. “You can understand that her adoring parents miss having conversations sometimes.”

Camille smiled ruefully as she scooped Rosie up. “I hope Fidel’s warned you that if you want scintillating conversation, we may need to give you a rain check.”

“Of course.” Juliette sobered. “Dwayne, can you take the plate of kale? Perfect; Fidel, the chicken? I am sorry,” she added. “Do you know — can you say — if he’s…?”

“Recovering,” said Camille quickly, because she was not prepared to say anything else. “That’s all…” Mercifully, Rosie provided a distraction by grabbing at her curls. “Ahh, _ma petite chou_ , that’s not a toy.”

They sorted themselves out with a minimum of fuss, Fidel carving (and then creating tiny fragments of chicken for Rosie) while Juliette oversaw the distribution of the side dishes. Camille still felt slightly befogged. She picked guiltily and without appetite at the excellent food. But she let the conversation flow over and around her. She described French methods of cooking kale. And watching Juliette reach for her husband’s knee under the table, watching Dwayne play peek-a-boo with Rosie, she found herself, despite everything, consoled.


	12. Towards a Solution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following chapter contains hopefully-plausible but under-researched medical assertions. It also contains major spoilers for _The Guardian_ ’s quick crossword 15566.

“You’re calling about Mr. Poole?” said the hospital receptionist, when Camille had identified herself over the phone.

For what felt like a long moment, Camille wondered what the hospital canteen was making of her. “No,” she said eventually, “I was wondering if I could speak to the surgeon who was in charge of the operation. I… I need medical evidence.”

“I’ll look in his diary.” Camille doodled on the border of her notepad. “He’s free at noon?”

“I’ll be there.” She hung up and ran a hand through her hair. “All right, Fidel, Dwayne: what are we missing?”

“Sasha Moore got her cosmetic surgery on St. Lucia,” said Fidel. “Five years ago.”

“Okay, so it was after the move to Spain. Does that matter?”

“Maybe.” Fidel brandished a sheaf of papers. “Apparently she was in a bad road accident shortly before moving abroad. She was in the car with her sister; a lorry swerved across the motorway. Basically, they didn’t stand a chance.” Camille shivered involuntarily. “The sister — Helen Reid — was killed.”

“Right, so she might have wanted surgery to reduce scarring, maybe as a method of coping with trauma… that’s something. Good work. Dwayne?”

“Emails,” said Dwayne portentously. “I talked with Angela Birkett’s secretary again…”

“Long distance relationship?”

Dwayne cleared his throat. “…And, long story short, I got a look at Angela Birkett’s emails. She been writing the Chief here, back and forth a couple of times, talking about the reunion.”

“Yes?”

“First she’s trying to get him over to England — it’s their twenty-fifth, after all — and he puts her off. I know, I was shocked too: the Chief, pass up a chance to get rained on? but he just says he has a lot of commitments here. Then she says she could maybe get the others to come down here to Saint-Marie.”

“As we know she did,” put in Fidel.

“Yes but here’s the thing. He don’t say yes. ‘A great deal of unnecessary trouble to put yourself to,’ etc., and that’s where they seem to drop it, unless she deleted things.”

“And she emailed him here at the station? Then let’s get into it.”

“On it.”

Camille ran a hand through her hair. “So she was lying, and Roger Sadler was lying, and Sasha is almost certainly lying.”

“Let’s just assume James is lying too,” said Dwayne morosely.

“But none of this tells us how the Chief could be a danger to them,” observed Fidel. 

“No.” Camille sighed. “I’ll talk to Angela Birkett again on my way to the hospital. Fidel, is the printer properly online today? I just need to do one thing first.”

* * *

She found Angela Birkett again on the patio, in a different chair, with a different-colored drink.

“This one has alcohol in it,” said Angela in greeting. “Do you want one? The others will be down soon. I think Roger’s finishing up a call to his wife.”

“No, thank you; it was you with whom I needed to speak. We can wait if you like, but I suspect you would prefer to have this conversation alone.”

The woman’s dark eyes flashed up, full of fear. “It’s about the holiday,” said Camille, as gently as she could. “We’ve seen the emails, so we know that it was your idea… but that Richard didn’t know you were coming.”

“No…” Angela Birkett nipped at the concoction in her hand, and coughed. “They made fun of me — well, James did, mostly — about my feelings for Richard.” She seemed disinclined to speak further, so Camille sat down.

“That must have been hurtful.”

“Yes. I didn’t — it wasn’t — I couldn’t help it,” said Angela, and Camille found herself feeling unprofessionally sorry for her. “So I decided we should come here. I have money put by; I could afford it. Ordinarily it seems hard to think up nice things to do, you know? This was different; this was our twenty-fifth reunion and it seemed awful to pretend that it wouldn’t matter whether or not Richard was there. But now…” Her eyes welled up. “How was I to know that… that one of the others… that they secretly felt…”

“I don’t think it was a university secret,” said Camille, flouting her own better judgment. “It’s not your fault, in any case. Here, dry your eyes; the others are coming.”

“Oh dear!”

“And order another cocktail,” said Camille firmly, “and don’t let them walk all over you. If they ask why I was here, tell them only about the booking.”

Angela Birkett nodded, and Camille fled.

She was just in time for her appointment with the surgeon, Arthur Longsworth, a man with kind, deep-set eyes and mahogany skin.

“Inspector Bordey,” he said, giving her time to catch her breath, “what can I do for you?”

Camille swallowed. “I have an unusual request, Mr. Longsworth. I’ll try to explain it as thoroughly and as concisely as I can; I know you’re a busy man. I’m dealing with a case…” Her throat closed over the words.

“Assault with grievous bodily harm, I should think,” said the surgeon dryly. 

Camille exhaled. “Yes, but the difficult thing is that there are conflicting accounts of the event itself. And I was hoping that the medical evidence — your medical evidence — might help clear up what happened. It’s the sort of thing we usually get from a pathologist,” she added apologetically.

Longsworth smiled. “I see that police officers and surgeons are forced to share a similar sense of humor, Inspector Bordey.” He folded his hands on the table. “I will attempt to spare you the jargon. The first blow was delivered at a sharp downward angle — a little awkwardly, if I were forced to say. The second blow was both more direct and more forceful, delivered with less resistance from the victim. That assessment’s given as one professional to another; I’d bawl out a medical student for making a guess like that.”

“Your reputation is safe with me.”

“The last one,” said the surgeon, “was very clearly aimed at the heart, and was deflected along the third rib.” More sharply he added: “Inhale for a count of 5, Inspector Bordey.”

“Thank you,” said Camille, having done so. “I — I’m sorry. Is there, in your considered opinion, any way that these wounds could have been inflicted in self-defense?”

Longsworth’s eyebrows climbed halfway to his hairline. “The first one? Just maybe, although I’d say not, since the assailant was standing over your colleague. The other two?” He shook his head.

Again Camille drew in a long breath. “And you’d swear to that in court, as an expert witness.”

“Any time you like.”

“Thank you.” Camille replaced her notebook in her bag, annoyed to find that her hands were shaking slightly. “Really, I’m very grateful for your time.”

“ _Il n’y a pas de quoi_ ,” said the surgeon, and Camille left him.

She found Richard Poole awake and staring at the ceiling. “Knock knock.”

“I hate when people do that.”

“I brought you a present.” She bent and pulled the folded sheet out of her satchel. “I,” she said, “have brought you a crossword. It’s not the Times, before you ask, but theirs weren’t printable online. It is English.”

He smiled faintly. “Good enough.”

“Good.” Camille smiled, and settled herself in her chair. “Let’s see, 1 across is sympathy for another’s suffering, 10 letters — I know that, compassion. Here’s a clue for you: London cricket ground.”

“Lord’s.”

“It’s only four letters.”

“The Oval.”

“You know, Richard, I’m positively reassured about your progress. Now here’s an odd one. ‘Dee, Exe, or Wye, say.’ D, X, or Y, say? Is it a riddle? It’s five letters.”

“River.” There was something like tenderness in his voice. “They’re English rivers.”

“Ah. River. That’s 8 across, which means that our white wine from Umbria is O, and then a space, and then a V, and…”

“Orvieto.” Camille looked up in surprise. “Orvieto. Beautiful little town north of Rome. Beautiful cathedral.”

 _Take me there someday._ “Aha,” said Camille, “very good. Angels are seraphs, and rice is paella… what is an ‘upland tract’?”

“Well, if you ask Monty Python… Never mind. Joke.” 

Camille shook her head at him. “I’ll just go ahead and fill in ‘French military cap.’ 20 down, what’s fired from a gun? Shells? Bullets? It’s an abbreviation — for caliber? I’m overthinking this.” When she looked up again, he’d fallen asleep.


	13. Clues Again

The next morning found the Honoré police force demoralized and under-caffeinated. Honoré itself, following the mystery in the papers, courteously refrained from bar brawls and market disputes. Gossip over an attempted murder offered, in any case, much of the entertainment that might otherwise have arisen from petty crime. Stuffed pastries were left on the porch of the police station, an offering to the keepers of peace. And if offerings were also made to the Marassa, lovers of justice and terrible in their punishments, that was done in secret. If more than one inhabitant of Saint-Marie observed that the choleric and temperamental spirits who guarded faith, hope, and charity had more than a little in common with the police officer on whose behalf healing was sought, that was secret too, and only a rainstorm in the night spoke of the invisible presence of the sacred twins.

“Passion fruit cream,” sighed Dwayne, brushing pastry crumbs from his uniform. “I hope sugar is good for crime-solving.”

“Four suspects,” said Camille, “two of whom we have eliminated on probability.”

“No external point of access,” said Fidel morosely, “and no motive for any of them.”

Dwayne merely groaned, head bent over his mug of coffee as though determined not to let the vapor escape.

“We talked to James Moore yesterday,” continued Fidel, “and all we could get out of him was that he didn’t like the way the Chief looked at his wife.”

Camille twisted over the back of her chair to look at him. “Seriously?”

“I know. But there is _something_ going on there, I’m sure of it.”

“Mm.” Camille ran a hand through her hair. “It doesn’t make sense. We have all the evidence. We have all the pieces of the puzzle. And they still don’t fit together.”

“Maybe the pieces got put in the wrong box,” suggested Dwayne sourly.

Camille paused with her mug in both hands. “Say that again.”

“That maybe the pieces got put in the wrong box?”

“Yes.” Camille walked over to the whiteboard. “Maybe we’re looking at the wrong crime. What if there was already something that Richard — that the inspector was investigating? He gets too close, they get desperate, and… What if the Chief is our second body?”

“But we’ve checked their businesses, and they’re clean,” said Fidel. “It would make sense, but what’s the crime?”

Camille shrugged elaborately. 

“Angela Birkett brought them to Saint-Marie, but has no motive,” said Dwayne. “Roger Sadler may be a bit stupid, but he’s not desperate. And James Moore may be a piece of work — I wouldn’t drink with the man — but he’s technically honest.”

“Technically,” said Camille. “And his story about the fight was…?”

“That Roger wanted to call the police straight away, and James wanted to protect Sasha because she had acted in self-defense.” Dwayne’s eyebrows were eloquent of his skepticism. 

“And the medical evidence goes against that.” Camille found herself staring at the strangely formal headshot of Richard that they’d chosen for the board. “What about Spain?”

Fidel sat up straighter. “Spain?”

“I don’t know, there’s something funny there. The lorry accident, the move to Spain, the cosmetic surgery… if it doesn’t matter, why is it all there?”

“You’ve lost me,” said Dwayne.

“I know, I’m not making sense, I’m sorry. Sasha Moore’s beloved sister dies. It’s a tragic accident. So she moves to Spain with her husband, to get away from it all. And she gets cosmetic surgery, to cope with the trauma. But why do both? Why both the move and the surgery? Fidel, did the clinic in St. Lucia tell you about the work she had done?”

“No, but I can check.”

“Do that, thanks; I want to know if she was covering up scars. And Dwayne, do some more digging on the sisters, see if there’s anything there. Is Sasha protecting her sister because she still feels guilty? What could Richard know, or do, or say, that would matter?” Camille grabbed her satchel from her desk. “I’m going to need to talk to him again.”

* * *

“Furioso,” said Richard, when she walked in.

“What?”

“Our crossword. Furioso. Rio’s UFO, anagram, musical instruction, 14 down. Also, um, Roy Orbison.”

“What?”

“Er, 9 down, 1961 hit, “Only the Lonely”: that’s Roy Orbison. Promise you won’t laugh? Well, then, my mother liked it.”

Camille smiled. “I’m impressed.”

“She said you were very kind.”

Camille’s pen slipped. “What?”

“My mother,” explained Richard, with surprising patience. “I spoke to her this morning. She said you were very kind.”

“Oh. Well…”

“She also said you had telephoned while she was having her morning tea. For my mother, this means between the hours of 7:00 and 7:30 a.m., without fail, Greenwich time.”

“Yes,” said Camille, understanding that this was a question. “Yes, I… I couldn’t sleep.”

“And are you…” He paused, and she waited. “Are you sleeping better?”

_No. Yes. A little._ She looked up at him: flesh had fallen away from his bones, and his face looked strange under a beard, but he was sitting up, and his eyes were clear. “Yes,” said Camille, “yes, better now. What’s a synonym for circuitous?”

“How many letters?”

“Ten. Fourth and fifth are N and D…”

“Meandering.”

“No, because of the abbreviation for ammunition.”

“Roundabout.”

“That’s almost scary.” Camille held up her hands. “It was a compliment. Look, Richard — sir — there’s something I need to ask you. At least one thing.”

“Fire away.”

“You understand that I can’t — that we can’t take your theories as evidence since you’ve been the victim of a crime?”

He scoffed. “Yes, of course I understand that; was that all you wanted to ask?”

“No.” Camille sighed. “We’re trying to work out details of everyone’s history, of everyone’s shared history. And Angela Birkett said… she said that Sasha had married James instead of you. And I can’t figure out if it matters.” _First duty of a police officer,_ she told herself bitterly: _keep a clear head._

Richard Poole sighed. “I don’t suppose it does. Even presuming,” he added, “that it were true.”

“What?” She was sure that she had answered too eagerly, that her face would be too transparent to him.

“Well.” He lifted his good shoulder slightly. “It was James she was seeing. They were the ones doing concerts and punting and candlelit dinners and all that. We were just…” He smiled, and Camille ached to see how it transformed his face. “We were just inseparable.”

“Oh.” Camille swallowed. “I’m sorry, Richard. Sir, I mean — would you rather I — ?”

“It’s fine.” His voice was very gentle. “It’s fine.”

Camille forced an unsteady smile. “Okay. Do you know… do you know why she would have gotten cosmetic surgery?”

“God has given you one face and you make yourselves another,” he said, and she thought he sounded very weary. “It does seem a bit pointless, doesn’t it? Let her paint an inch think, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.”

“You should rest,” said Camille.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I…”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I had to… well. I’ll call you when we have news.”

“Yes,” said Richard again; his voice was slurring. “Sorry. Give Dwayne and Fidel… best…”

“I will,” said Camille, and chose to believe that he heard her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow may have to be a day of rest in the posting schedule. As attentive observers of the total chapter count will have noted, it's taking a bit longer to resolve all the planned plot than originally estimated.


	14. Conclusions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel rather that I’ve been reduced to a “because I said so” logic of authorial rules here. In writing fix-it fic for 3x01, I’ve had to figure out ways for the team to work out the solution without relying on Inspector Poole’s insights… without killing him off. So I’ve kept his hypotheses artificially off the table by claiming conflict of interest.

“All right,” said Camille, marching back into the station. “I’ve talked to Ri — to the inspector, and we seem to have confirmation that whatever tension was between him and the Moores, it wasn’t over the question of James and Sasha’s being a couple.”

“We can’t just ask the Chief what it was about?”

“No, Dwayne, especially not with Sasha having mentioned assault. Yes, we have medical evidence, but we also have conflicting narratives, and…”

“But it’s the Chief!”

“And we need to be impartial,” finished Camille. “You know it’s how he would handle things — how he does handle things.”

Dwayne merely sighed. Fidel cleared his throat. “I have the data from the St. Lucia clinic. Sasha went there for what they call facial contouring; there’s a lot of technical jargon, but she didn’t ask for any scar revision.”

“None?”

“Apparently not. They weren’t happy about sharing the details; I had to fax over the warrant.”

“Well done, Fidel. Dwayne, where are we on the lorry accident?”

“Definitely an accident. But I looked up a bit more about Helen Reid. She was at college with the rest of them, after all.”

“Good. And?”

“Well, she seems to have been a little bit lost, you know. Not like her driven older sister — easy to see how she might have resented her, but that’s the wrong way round, see what I mean? Anyway: I talked to the University; they had to translate some numbers, but Helen’s degree was the kind you get when you’re doing just enough work, you know? Talked to a tutor who had both of them, and she nearly cried telling me about Sasha’s dissertation on _Le rouge et le noir_. Pity she never went on for the Ph.D., apparently. You listen to this lady, it seems like it’s a real shame Sasha fell in love.”

Camille made a face. “Well, looking at James, do we disagree? But what about Helen?”

Dwayne shrugged. “Nothing much. Series of jobs, nothing she really sticks to… and a conviction for shoplifting. Which is strange — those girls never wanted for nothing.”

“Shoplifting,” said Camille, staring at the board.

“Yes.”

“The wrong way round,” said Camille slowly.

“…Yes?”

“And she didn’t get the right kind of surgery,” pursued Camille thoughtfully. “The wrong way round — Agatha Christie, the wrong sister, Stendhal — my god.”

“You know,” said Fidel, “it’s scary how much like him you sound when you do that?”

“Sorry,” said Camille. “But listen: it would make sense if Helen resented Sasha; if the sister with the inheritance, the smart one, generous, brilliant, alluring Sasha — if there were some kind of conspiracy around her death?”

“But there wasn’t,” said Dwayne.

“And if the woman here, the woman married to James, the woman Angela Birkett says was reserved with the man who was her best friend at university… if she wasn’t Sasha?”

“No!” Fidel’s was an exclamation of pure astonishment. “No, that’s…” He trailed off, staring at the whiteboard with its photographs of the culprits, its photographs of young men and women dressed up for a university dance.

“I know,” said Camille. “But if it makes more sense than anything else?”

“There’s no way we’d be able to prove it.”

“There is, Dwayne, and you found it.”

“I did?”

“Bring Helen Reid’s police file over here.” Together they stood over Richard Poole’s desk, looking at two identical sets of fingerprints.

“That’s…” said Fidel. “She’s not Sasha.”

“No.” Camille ran her fingertips thoughtfully over the whorls. “No, and Richard knew. He took the Stendhal as his proof: proof of the fact that the well-kept, successful woman living off her fortune in Spain wasn’t his friend.”

“And that she stole her inheritance,” said Dwayne.

“And that she covered up her sister’s death,” added Fidel.

Dwayne let out a long breath, rubbed his hand over his head. “Looks like we found ourselves a motive.”

“It was supposed to be one clean hit,” said Camille, pressing her lips together. “One silent blow, and the crime blamed on an outsider, some angry islander who would never be found by the provincial police.”

Fidel crossed to his desk. “You want me to call everyone together?”

“No.” Camille smiled at him, a little sadly. “No, I don’t have the heart for it. We make our arrests, we do the paperwork. You and Dwayne pick her up. Arrest James as an accessory after the fact.”

Dwayne touched his cap. “Very good, Chief — er, Camille.” She gave him a salute, and he and Fidel departed.

* * *

It was not, in the end, very complicated. Camille put Helen Reid into Fidel and Dwayne’s custody, and presented James Moore with the fingerprints of the woman he had passed off as his wife.

“Conspiracy to defraud,” she said coolly. “That’s at a minimum. We are also making the case that you had full knowledge of her plan to murder a man in cold blood in order to conceal your joint crime.”

“That’s not — ” said James Moore, and swallowed. His face was the color of whey. “That’s not what — ”

“Not what happened?” suggested Camille. “The fact that she stabbed Richard Poole with an ice pick and you fought with one of your oldest friends about whether or not to call the police, those two things are completely unrelated?”

She waited. The duty solicitor at James’ elbow looked distinctly unimpressed. “I would advise you,” she said, “to think very carefully about what you want to say. Since it’s the only principle with which you seem to be familiar, I would also advise you to think very carefully about how you can save your own skin.” Camille left the room without a backward glance.

“You okay?” asked Fidel.

“Yeah,” said Camille. “Yeah. Is Helen talking?”

Fidel sighed. “Hear her talk, she’s a victim of circumstance. Wasn’t her idea to impersonate Sasha, that was James. Wasn’t her intention to seriously harm the Chief: he confronted her, and… Well,” said Fidel, “you get the picture.”

Camille swallowed. “Yes.”

“Man,” said Dwayne pithily, coming in from the cells, “a piece of work!”

“Yes,” said Camille again. “Look, the two of you go home. It’s been a long day, and it’s all over but the paperwork. I’ll call Commissioner Patterson, let him know that we have our result.” 

Dwayne laid a hand on her shoulder. “You get some rest now.”

“You too. Fidel, give Juliette my love — oh! The Chief sends you both his best.”

“Now that’s one for the books,” said Fidel, smiling.

“Ah,” said Dwayne, “we’ll get him into that island spirit in the end. ’Night, Camille.”

“Night.”

Camille was true to her word; she called the commissioner and was unsurprised to receive the word that he was attending an official dinner. “He left this number for you to ring.”

“Oh,” said Camille, “thank you.” She smoothed her hair while listening to the telephone ring in an unfamiliar entrance hall, as though she could embarrass the commissioner by sounding as though she were disheveled and exhausted. “Commissioner Patterson.”

“Acting Inspector Bordey.”

“We — we have our result, sir. We’ve arrested Inspector Poole’s attacker and an accomplice. The chain of evidence is solid. There won’t be any trouble.”

“I am glad to hear it. I was sure that you would bring the case to a successful conclusion.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you. I’ll let you get back to your dinner.”

“A good evening to you.”

“Yes,” said Camille, a little blankly. “Thank you.” She replaced the desk phone in its cradle, and made another call.

“Poole,” said the familiar voice on the other end.

“Richard, it’s me.” Camille blinked back tears. “I thought… I thought you would want to know that we solved it.”

“Ah. Camille.”

“Yes. And I’m sorry about your friend.” The silence seemed to last a long time, with only their shared breathing audible on the wire.


	15. Paperwork

The next morning, Camille found herself enjoying her croissant. She arrived at the station to find that Dwayne had already made the coffee.

“You deserve a commendation,” she said. “And now all we have to handle is the paperwork.”

“That’s bad enough.” He clucked his tongue expressively. “Tourists.”

“Mm.” She sipped her coffee meditatively. “Fidel!”

“Sorry,” said Fidel rather breathlessly. “Mango for breakfast. I don’t know how Rosie gets it everywhere, but…”

“Don’t worry about it. I was just going to ask you about Roger Sadler. Do we want to charge him? He wasn’t in a public space, so drunk and disorderly conduct would be tricky. We could charge him with common assault. He’d get off with a fine.”

“If it stuck at all,” said Fidel. “Threatening violence against an accessory to murder after one of his friends had been attacked…” He shrugged.

“I say we caution him,” said Dwayne. “He accepts he’s guilty — I caught him red-handed, after all — the caution goes on his record, end of story.”

“And it saves his family the publicity,” said Camille. “Murderous attack on a policeman? Graduates of elite university partying in the Caribbean? Theft of a dead woman’s identity? The tabloids will love it.”

“And the Chief will hate it,” said Dwayne.

“Yes, well, he can appoint one of us to be press secretary.” Fidel sighed capaciously. “Sorry, Fidel, it does seem likely. Or,” added Camille, brightening, “we can tell reporters to call the commissioner!”

Dwayne chuckled. “Now that is cunning. Diabolical!” He drew out the syllables with relish.

“Thank you,” said Camille complacently. “Now, about the other two: I want us to be thorough, and I want a charge sheet that can reach between your desks.”

“And Angela Birkett?” asked Fidel.

“Yes,” said Camille thoughtfully. “We can send her home, but let’s wait a few hours to make that call — until it’s too late to book the afternoon flight. I think the sun and sand might be good for her.”

“Honoré Police, social secretarial services…” remarked Dwayne.

“I presume,” said Fidel, “that we’re not telling the Chief about this.”

“Correct,” said Camille, “but I am telling him that it might be nice if he were to call her before she leaves the island. She’s fond of him. What?” she added, seeing the look her colleagues exchanged. “You know he’d never think of it himself.” 

“No,” agreed Fidel and Dwayne in chorus, and the three resumed their several tasks.

* * *

Afternoon was turning to evening when the phone rang. “Honoré Police Station,” said Fidel. “Yes, sir; it’s good to hear your voice, sir. Yes, sir. Certainly — Camille?” Camille looked up and raised her eyebrows. “He wants you.”

Camille picked up her extension. “Sir?”

“There’s been a fire on the other side of Mt. Clair.”

Camille stared blankly at her handset for a moment. “Are there suspicious circumstances? How do you know this? Did you get the nurses to smuggle you in a radio?”

“No, and I’m shocked you would suggest such a thing. Also, I can hear the face you’re making.” Camille stopped making it. “No,” he said again, “the issue at stake is that there are casualties, and since I don’t really need the bed… Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t seem to have the money for a taxi. And it would hardly be suitable for a policeman to…”

“Richard Poole,” said Camille indignantly, “I cannot believe that you would suggest getting a taxi rather than having us pick you up — “

“As a matter of fact, I didn't — ”

“No, I know you’re not actually suggesting it; that’s a detail.”

“That’s a very French thing to say.”

“Oh, I have more French things I could say about it.” Camille did not miss Fidel’s raised eyebrows. “When do you get out?”

“You make it sound as though I’ve been locked up in Wandsworth,” grumbled Richard. “The doctor’s coming along to confirm they’re not being negligent by releasing me on my own recognizances, and I have a number of forms to sign, it seems, but perhaps in an hour’s time? Naturally, I can wait if…”

“I’ll be there,” said Camille. 

“It’s very kind of you.”

“Nonsense.”

She could hear his half-chuckle over the phone. “Now that, if I may say so, is a very English thing to say.”

Camille made another face. “Goodbye, Richard. Sir.”

* * *

In the end, she was almost late. The church bell rang for vespers, she cast a wild glance at the clock, and began shoving objects into her satchel. Overcome on the porch by a sudden conviction that she had forgotten either her phone or her keys, and possibly both, she overheard an exchange she was not meant to.

“Man,” said Dwayne, investing the word with three syllables and a wealth of significance.

“Meaning?” asked Fidel.

“Next time Camille says she’s not one to jump for no man, no way, no how — well, I’m not mentioning this, that’s all.”

“So this is you not mentioning it,” said Fidel.

“That’s right.”

“Because it’s none of our business.”

“That’s right.”

Fidel sighed, and gave in. “Look, it — it’s the Chief. We all know how he is.”

“That’s right.”

Camille crept very quietly along the remaining length of the porch (she had forgotten neither her phone nor her keys) and ran lightly to the Land Rover.

She found him on a bench outside hospital reception. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Fresh air,” responded Richard Poole, “is in my experience an expression usually employed to characterize air that is brisk, bracing. But I’ve been enjoying this. Quite surprising, really.”

“Yes,” said Camille, smiling, "there’s a nice breeze this evening. Don’t even think about picking up that grip.” She opened his door on the way to lifting the bag into the back of the Land Rover.

“I’m not an invalid, you know.”

Camille gave him a look. “That is, at the moment, precisely what you are.”

“Well, but — ”

“And,” she continued, putting the truck in gear, “you are also a man who attempted, in my absence, to solve a case while ill with fever; and who, in my presence, jumped into a shaft of uncertain depth because you thought it might hold a clue.”

“Well,” said Richard, and subsided.

“And yes,” said Camille, “before you ask or decide not to: we can stop by the pharmacist’s on the way to your house. I presume they gave you a scrip for painkillers.”

“Thank you,” said Richard Poole, with comparative meekness, and they drove through the cool evening into the town.

“Now,” said the pharmacist, “these may have side effects including drowsiness, so you shouldn’t be driving a car or…”

“You think I’ll be driving a car with this?” Camille stifled a smile.

“…Or any heavy machinery,” said the pharmacist repressively. “You may also notice some effects to the digestive system, such as…”

“Look, I’m sure we needn’t get into all that.” 

Camille, taking pity on him, turned around and devoted her attention to looking oblivious. Unseeing she stared at the contents of the nearest shelving unit.

“Right,” said Richard at her shoulder. “That’s, er, settled then. Am I interrupting your weekend plans, Sergeant? Look, there’s really no need… I’m terribly sorry to have, um…”

Camille shook herself slightly, and realized that she’d been staring at a display euphemistically labeled Family Planning. “Oh! Oh, no, that’s not…” She smiled at him, anxious, earnest, flustered, clutching his paper pharmacy bag. “ _J’avais la tête dans les nuages_ ; I had my head in the clouds. Don’t worry about it. Let’s go.”

“Camille,” he said, when they were in the Land Rover again, “may I ask you something?”

Involuntarily she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Of course.”

“I keep… dreaming about it,” said Richard, and she forced herself to breathe deeply. “Bits and pieces of things, fragments… It’s like having the clues to several crosswords at once, and not knowing which go with which, not knowing what’s real and… Well.” She glanced over and found him staring rigidly ahead. “You weren’t there, were you.” He said it flatly, as though seeking confirmation of a fact.

“Yes, I was.”

“But that’s impossible.”

Camille found herself smiling. Trust Richard to deny a seeming impossibility in the face of another’s assertion! “Well, sir,” she said gravely, “here I must swear you to secrecy, because it certainly _should_ be impossible for a Royal Enfield to beat an ambulance from Honoré to Hilltop Villas. But, as it turns out, it isn’t.”

“Ah,” he said, “Dwayne.”

“Yes.” They drove for a few moments in silence. “I was in the sidecar.”

“Ah. I’m afraid,” said Richard apologetically, “that I don’t remember what you said.”

Camille shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, it was with some effort. “I do,” he said, “remember the sound of your voice.”


	16. Homecoming

Camille pulled on the handbrake of the Land Rover and jogged round the bonnet. “Do not,” she said, “even think about opening that door.”

“I feel,” said Richard self-consciously, as she offered him her arm, “rather like the Marquis in _A Tale of Two Cities_. Spoiled aristocrat, descending iniquitously from his carriage, quite literally held up by the bodies of his subordinates.”

“I promise,” said Camille, “if I start feeling like a peasant of the _ancien régime_ , I’ll let you know.”

He smiled, a little tightly. “That’s a relief.”

He opened the house while she fetched the grip, and then they found themselves standing a little awkwardly in the entryway. The house had taken on the dusty smell of unused places, overlaid by the salt tang of the sea.

“I’m sorry Harry isn’t here to greet you.”

“Oh,” said Richard, “he’s probably sulking. Days on end without being allowed to help on a crossword; he’ll be beside himself.”

“Ah, that must be it.” Camille hesitated; she could not help but feel they were both waiting for something. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Oh no.” He said it hastily, as if instinctively. “I’ll be fine,” he added. “I’ll be fine, Camille.”

“All right.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. He was still too thin, and too pale, and his arm was in a sling, and he stood there assuring her that he would be all right, that he didn’t want her help, that he wanted — what was it he called it? — his own company. “All right, Richard,” said Camille, and burst into tears.

“Erm,” said Richard Poole.

“ _J’ai eu si peur, Richard!_ ” wailed Camille, and stamped her foot. Her knees buckled, and she ended up on the arm of the basket chair, clutching at its back so that he would not see her face.

“Oh God, Camille. I didn’t mean — you know I’m not good at — have a hankie.” Blindly she stretched out a hand for it.

“Is there anything I can…” he began, and she sobbed harder. “I’ll… take that as a no, then. It’s all right, I mean, er, take your time.”

Eventually, she sat back against the opposite arm of the basket chair, caught her breath, and blew her nose prodigiously into his handkerchief. “I’ll launder it,” she said in a small voice, “before giving it back.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” said Richard formally. “Though of course you’re welcome to keep it. Ah… shall I make us some tea?”

Camille shot to her feet. “Absolutely not. _Merde_ , Richard.” She stalked into the kitchen, leaving him trailing in her wake. “The day — the very day — you leave the hospital with a badly injured shoulder, and you want to be lifting a heavy metal pot filled with water. Absolutely not.” The kitchen tap squeaked under her hand. “Honestly, Richard.” The gas flame popped and flared into life, and she stood staring at the kettle, her arms tightly crossed over her chest.

“Er, thank you,” he said awkwardly. She didn’t turn around. “Is, um… is that the way you cry?”

“What?” She whirled to face him, shoved a hand through her curls. “That’s an awful thing to say!”

“I know it is, it’s just…”

“You think I just make it up? You think I cry to get you to feel sorry for me, _hein_ , is that what you think?”

“No, no of course not, but…” Camille raised her eyebrows, and waited. He swallowed visibly. “It’s just that, when I first met you, you were a maid. I mean, you were undercover as a maid. And when I told you that Charlie Hume was dead, you… you cried like a lost child. You sat on the edge of the bed — my bed, now — and wept and wept, and I thought… I thought how innocent you must be, or she must be, if you like. How innocent, and how tenderhearted, to weep like that for an employer.”

Camille’s mouth twisted. “But now you know I’m made of sterner stuff?”

“Not that, exactly. But more experienced. More used to death, and…” He gestured vaguely with his good hand. 

“Yes.”

“And even when — forgive me, but even when Aimée died — I don’t remember seeing you cry. At least, not…” He let the sentence remain unfinished.

“No,” said Camille softly. “No, not like that.” She gripped the bar on the oven door with both hands. “Richard…” The kettle began a hollow whistle. “Tea!” said Camille. “Where are the mugs?”

She made the tea while he hovered; she allowed him to carry the sugar bowl to the table. When they were seated, the tea brewed and poured out, Camille sighed, and began again.

“Aimée was my friend, Richard, yes. And I cared for her. But we hadn’t seen each other in years; I didn’t… I didn’t really know who she was as a person, you know, who she was in the world.” She met his eyes. “You understand that.”

“Yes.” The night around them was very quiet.

“We work with each other every day, Richard,” said Camille. “We see each other every day. And we argue, and tease each other, and we stand next to each other without thinking about it, and we can decide on a strategy without speaking.”

“Yes,” said Richard again.

“We…” said Camille, and blew out a breath, and changed tack. “I know you, Richard,” she said. “I know that you don’t speak French, but that you read about the history of this island, and remember what you read. I know that you’re afraid of nuns and snakes — no, I’m not going to apologize again, it was funny. I know that you have a sweet tooth. I know that you love the stars, and that you like Cluedo for some reason. I know that you’ll drink tea when it’s 110 degrees outside.”

“Well, as Disraeli said…”

“I know that you’re kind,” continued Camille, “and funny, as well as irritatingly clever. And sometimes just irritating. I know that Rosie was the first baby you held.” She inhaled sharply. “I know what you look like when you’re tired, or annoyed, or excited because an idea has just come together. And I saw you bleeding under my hands.”

“Camille…”

“I thought you might _die_ ,” said Camille, and in the room there was only the sound of the sea.

“Camille, I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I was frightened.”

“I’m sorry.”

Camille took a sip of her tea. “Well, that’s a start.”

“Though I would maintain,” said Richard over his teacup, “that almost dying wasn’t my fault.”

She smiled at him, a little shakily. “Granted. Though you _could_ have told your colleagues that oh, by the way, one of your old school chums just might be a murderer.”

“Camille, where on earth did you pick up the phrase ‘old school chums’?”

“I don’t know; from you?”

“God, perish the thought.” She noticed the lines that gathered around his eyes when he was not quite smiling; when his mirth was only for her. Camille let out a breath. 

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “For…”

He made an abortive motion that ended in a wince. “Don’t be. An apology would be disturbingly unlike you, for one thing. And for another, I should say you’ve rather earned it.” There was a pause. “Stay,” said Richard Poole.

“What?”

“Stay. I mean it. No sense in your driving back at this hour only to come back in the morning. You’re exhausted,” said Richard severely.

“ _I’m_ exhausted?” She held up her hands. “Fine, I don’t want to argue.”

“I’ll, um…”

“Richard, if you even _think_ about saying you’ll sleep in the chair I will murder you myself.” He shut his mouth. “That’s better. Think of it as an emergency.” She rose, and stretched. “Not a hurricane, maybe, but an emergency. And your bed’s big enough that I won’t jostle you.”

“Er,” said Richard. “Right. Yes. All right then.”

“Good,” said Camille.


	17. Night and Day

After she had insisted on undoing his buttons; after he had insisted that he wouldn’t fall over trying to change in the bathroom; after they had adjusted the pillows and carefully climbed into opposite sides of the bed, Camille lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sea. She tried not to hold herself unnaturally still; she tried not to listen to the stifled sighs from the other side of the bed.

“Camille.”

“Yes?”

“Have I…” He cleared his throat. “Have I ruined your life?”

“What?” She started to sit up, and stopped when she heard his intake of breath. “Why would you…? Why would you say such a thing?”

“Well, you’re… you’re an ambitious woman.”

“And? I’m not angling for your job, if that’s what you mean. I never was. I… look, Richard, the Commissioner made me Acting Inspector so that I could lead this case, not because he was trying to force you out. You know better than anyone that he wouldn’t do that.”

“Camille…”

“I’d understand if you didn’t want to come back, or didn’t feel ready to come back yet, but — Richard, I don’t care, you can be a consultant…”

“Camille…”

“I’ll make the case to the Commissioner, I’m sure he’d see reason, I…”

“Camille!” She fell silent. “Thank you,” said Richard more softly. “But what I meant was… when I first met you, you were working undercover. You were doing challenging work, dangerous work, not… sitting around a police station, or arresting petty criminals, or, er, partnering me. I remember how angry you were, and…” He sighed. “I upended your life. I didn’t mean to, you know that, but I blundered in and, well, I seem to have ended your undercover career. And I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Richard.” She wondered how to say what was necessary, how to make him understand it. “Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, I was good at it. But I also spent over a decade of my life not able to tell my university friends, or even my mother, what I was doing. I spent my twenties — yes, and my early thirties — unable to make friends outside of work. Okay, I still spend most of my time with you and Fidel and Dwayne, but it’s different. I spent most of my time not being me. Being someone else. And these past few years… I’ve gotten to be me. Even if my mother still sets me up on blind dates. I know I spend most of my evenings drinking beer with you. But that’s my choice. And I get to spend time being who I am… figuring out what I want, and who I want to be.” 

“Ah,” said Richard. There was a pause. “Really?”

“Really,” said Camille firmly.

“Ah,” said Richard again. “That’s good. That’s… that’s good then.” 

Camille smiled in the darkness. “Go to sleep, Richard.”

* * *

She woke early. Carefully she extracted herself from the bed. She made a phone call, and then she went down to the sea.

When she emerged from the shower, Richard was awake, though still in bed. “Ah!” She couldn’t quite tell whether it was a cry of pain or surprise. “Camille, you’re, ah…”

“Awake? Toweling my hair?”

“Ah, yes. Both of those things.”

“Very well observed,” she told him seriously. “If you were going to say _en déshabille_ , I’m not; I just haven’t put my top layer on yet.” She brandished the blouse demonstratively. “I wouldn't risk scandalizing Harry.”

“Ah,” said Richard again, and cleared his throat. “Very thoughtful.”

“Least I could do.” She extended a hand to him. “Would monsieur care to make his _lever_?”

“Really, Camille,” he said; but he took the proffered hand, and only groaned slightly in rising. Briefly he closed his eyes, and Camille dropped the towel and stepped closer. “I’m fine.” He opened his eyes. “I’m fine.”

Camille made a face at him, and did not dignify the remark with further response. “I’ll put the tea on while you wash up, if you like.”

“I’d be eternally grateful.” 

Camille not only made tea, but boiled an egg and browned toast. “Really,” said Richard, beholding her handiwork, “you didn’t have to…”

“I know. You can consider it a bribe, if you like.”

“Oh dear.”

“I’ve asked Juliette to bring Rosie over.”

He paused with a piece of toast halfway to his mouth. “You have?”

“I have. I know it’s your home. And an Englishman’s home is his castle.” That won a fleeting, one-cornered smile. “But I’m going to be at the station all day, and you’re miles away out here, and… I didn’t want you to be alone,” she ended lamely.

“It was a very kind thought,” said Richard.

“So you don’t mind?”

“It would be churlish of me to object.”

“That’s not quite the same thing.”

Richard tilted his head slightly in acknowledgment of this. “But close enough, perhaps?”

Camille saluted him with her teacup. “Close enough.”

* * *

“Thank you so much,” said Camille, kissing Juliette on both cheeks. “It’s really kind. Just name the Saturday you and Fidel want me to babysit — romantic weekend away, maybe?”

“That’s very tempting.” Juliette smiled. “Don’t think we won’t take you up on it. But it’s been fine. He’s surprisingly good with her, you know? I did a bit of cleaning, got a bit of conversation during Rosie’s morning nap, made us all soup for lunch. I’ve even had a bit of time to put my feet up,” she said, gesturing towards the vista of sand and sea. “They’re reading a book together now.” 

“Remarkable!”

“Ah, correction,” said Juliette, as they entered the house: “they _were_ reading a book together.”

“ _Tiens_ ,” said Camille softly. Richard and Rosie were in the wing chair, identically slack-jawed in sleep. Camille picked up the book from the floor. “ _Mon premier dictionnaire en images_! I had that when I was small.”

“Maybe they can learn French at the same time,” suggested Juliette, her eyes dancing.

“Maybe.” Camille went through to the kitchen and deposited her parcels; Juliette followed a few moments later. “Is she going to scream when you wake her up?”

“She’s been good today. So hopefully not.”

“He’ll be miserable if he sleeps too long in that chair. We can put on the kettle noisily.”

Juliette laughed. “I should get her up soon anyway, if she’s going to get to bed at a decent hour.” She laid a hand on Camille’s arm. “I really was glad to do it. Fidel thinks a lot of him, you know?”

“I know.” Camille swallowed. “We all do.”

“Mm.” Juliette’s gaze was thoughtful. “I do not believe that he thinks of you and Fidel in precisely the same way, though.”

“Juliette…”

“He calls you by your Christian name,” said Juliette, “and then uses your title because he thinks he has given too much away.”

Camille drew in a breath. “It isn’t — we’re not — ”

“I know. But a policeman’s wife gets pretty good at analyzing evidence.” Treble and baritone became audible in querulous counterpoint from the other room. “I’d better get her.” Camille was left alone in the kitchen to collect herself. 

“Yes, I know you want to read more about the _légumes_ , darling,” said Juliette firmly, “but we need to say goodbye. We can practice over our dinner. And perhaps you and Uncle Richard can read together some more next time. Yes?”

“Oh!” said Richard. Camille smiled to herself, picturing his astonishment. “Oh yes, er, quite. Rather. Yes. Absolutely.”

“Well, that’s fine then. Do you want to give your Uncle Richard a kiss? That’s my girl. Goodbye, Richard!”

“Oh, yes.” There was a minor scuffle of departure. “Thank you!” called Richard belatedly. The kettle whistled, and Camille took it off the hob. “Camille? Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’m just making the tea.”

There was a pause. “Is that French tea or English tea?”

“PG Tips brewed by a Frenchwoman.”

“Ah,” said Richard. He was smiling when she entered the room. “The Calais of teas, in that case.”

“You’ll have to explain.”

“English possessions in France. Hundred Years’ War.”

Camille shook her head at him. “How do you know so much, Richard?”

“Oh, I thought that was obvious.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’ve always been a reclusive misanthrope with no social life.”

She couldn’t help laughing; she was relieved to see that he didn’t seem to mind. “Well,” she said, “your days of being a recluse appear to be over. Dwayne and Fidel made me promise to tell you they want you at La Kaz the first night after you finish your prescription.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Because you can’t have alcohol while on painkillers.”

“Definitely ominous. Tell them I’ll come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Richard and Rosie are reading is here: https://archive.org/details/MonPremierDictionnaireEnImages/page/n55/mode/2up.


	18. A Dinner

Despite admonishing herself not to do so, Camille found herself observing her superior officer, not always surreptitiously, as they drank their tea. When he leant his head against the back of his chair she could resist no longer.

“Richard? Are you all right?”

“Hm?” He opened his eyes again. “Don’t tell me I was moaning like Jacob Marley’s ghost — I didn’t mean to.”

“No,” said Camille, deciding to leave the question of who or what Jacob Marley’s ghost was for another time, “but if you have to ask, should you perhaps take your next pill?”

He grimaced. “Probably. Which means making dinner; ‘to be taken with,’ you know. I think Juliette’s left some soup, if you…”

“Oh,” said Camille, “I brought dinner.”

“Oh.” She can’t decide whether she finds his surprise touching or simply sad. “I… that’s very good of you. You didn’t…”

“…Have to do it,” finished Camille. “I know. But as it happens, this was my mother’s doing. You needn’t look like that: it’s very mild, and it’s not soup. She’s worried that I’m not eating,” added Camille, and then cursed her exasperation for making her unwary. “Chicken and rice,” she continued quickly, “with saffron.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Richard formally.

Camille laughed. “You don’t have to say that. But it’s mild — the spices are from somewhere between southern France and northern Spain.”

“Ah.”

“ _Ah,_ what?”

“I have an idea,” said Richard, pushing himself up from his chair. “I just… need to find it.”

“You need to find your idea?”

“Something like that,” he said imperturbably, and Camille resigned herself to not knowing what it was.

“All right,” she said. “I’m just going to make sure your oven is fit to have things heated up in it.”

“Cleaned regularly with baking soda and vinegar.”

“ _Ah bon?_ ” It was, in fact, surprisingly clean, and Camille set the table with a feeling of satisfaction. “Do you have candles?”

“What?”

“You’ve returned home and you’re having dinner; I think the occasion deserves candles.”

“Ah,” said Richard. “Top left-hand drawer of the Welsh dresser.”

“Welsh dresser,” muttered Camille to herself, but she determined, by process of elimination, that it was the startlingly large piece of wooden furniture opposite the bed. The candles in the drawer were a mixture of tea lights and pillars, more suited to surviving hurricanes than creating ambience, but she set a number of the former floating in a bowl, and had completed setting the table by the time that Richard had returned from his mission of discovery.

“I’m afraid,” he said, holding the bottle out to her, “that I’ll have to ask you to uncork it.” He smiled. “One glass won’t hurt me.”

“Ah,” said Camille, “Campo Viejo, very nice. No,” she added, in response to his look, “I don’t know it. But I trust you.” To her surprise, he flushed, and turned away, half-fleeing to the open air. “Dinner in five minutes!” she called after him.

In the end, it was closer to seven. But having set up the table on the verandah, Camille served the chicken with pride, and found herself turning to it with surprising appetite.

“We ought,” said Richard, “to drink a toast.”

“Oh!” said Camille. “Yes, to your homecoming!”

“I’ll propose it, if I may.” Camille held up her hands in surrender: his wine, his house, his toast. “An officer of remarkable insight, as well as inexhaustible compassion — Acting Inspector Camille Bordey!”

“Richard!” said Camille, but she smiled.

“And a very good friend,” added Richard softly. 

“So,” said Camille, “ _c’est à mon tour._ Richard Poole: Saint-Marie’s most reluctant, most resilient, most redoubtable police officer.”

“Redoubtable?” said Richard, as she raised her glass to her lips.

“Mmhm. _Redoutable._ ” 

For a few minutes they ate in silence. “You know,” said Richard thoughtfully, “this is actually very good.”

Camille laughed. “I’ll tell my mother. And I’ll leave out the ‘actually.’”

“Good of you.”

Camille watched him for a few moments in silence, and then took another swallow of her wine. “Richard, are you all right?”

“Hm?”

Camille put down her silverware and raised her hands in self-deprecation. “Look, I know it’s not a fair question; I know you’re tired, and worn out, and probably in pain, and… and I meant, besides all that.”

“Ah,” said Richard. He raised his napkin carefully to his lips. Camille tried not to itemize the hollows at his temples, the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the pallor under his new beard. “I was thinking,” said Richard, “about you.”

“Oh.” Camille gripped her hands together in her lap. “I see.” She resisted the temptation to refill her glass, and resisted, too, the desire to fill his silence with anxious questions.

“It’s not,” said Richard, with surprising perspicacity, “about anything you’ve done, or…” He cleared his throat. “Or at least, not… not, er, more than usual.”

“Oh yes?” Strangely, she found herself reassured by his awkwardness.

“I have come to think of you,” said Richard, “as an irrational constant.”

“A _what_? Richard, if this is about me being French…”

“No.” He tried to put out a hand, and winced. “It’s — ow, I’m fine — it’s like pi.”

“Like pie?”

“In mathematics: an irrational number represented by the Greek letter π. 3.141592653589… well, it goes on. We don’t know all of it; we don’t need to. All we need to know is that it defines a circle — the most perfect form in nature or art.” Camille became conscious that her mouth was slightly open. “According to medieval thinkers,” added Richard.

“Medieval thinkers,” echoed Camille.

“Yes. The bit about the irrational constant defining the perfect form. It’s that which defines perfection, really. It’s where we get the expression — well, I don’t know what it is in French, but the idea is that the whole universe sings. When we look out into the night sky, what we see is our own darkness; the truth is light, and singing.”

Camille found herself incapable of holding his eyes, and dropped hers to the table. She was breathing too quickly; she was sure he could see it. She toyed with her fork, and wondered if there was anything that she could say, any question she could ask that would not damage this uncertain, fragile intimacy. What she found herself staring at was the wine label. And Camille smiled. “Richard,” she asked mildly, “is that a mature Rioja?”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, ah, yes. That is,” he stammered, “it could use another few years… but it’s quite a, a complex vintage. It’ll stand aging, you know: good tannin structure. Just coming into its own now. Er, yes.”

Camille raised her eyes again to meet his. “Richard,” she said, “would you like to kiss me?”

“Ah,” said Richard, and choked on air. “I, ah…”

Camille analyzed the evidence. She looked at the repressed, exhausted man opposite her, at the flush in his cheeks, the eyes too large in his face. And she got up from her chair.

“Camille,” said Richard, in a strangled voice, “you don’t…”

“…have to,” she said, rounding the table. “I know.” She trailed the back of her hand along his jawline, and his eyes closed. Camille leaned close enough that she could smell the wine on his breath. “Perhaps,” she said, “I want to.” 

Surprising was the warmth of him. Surprising, too, was his responsiveness. He had no sense of rhythm, of how to deepen a kiss — or perhaps he was simply, in this moment, shy. But he kissed her warmly and sweetly; and when she opened her mouth, and nipped at his lower lip, he accepted the invitation. Camille mewled, and was left bereft.

“Did I hurt you?”

Her eyes still closed, she laughed. “I think that’s my line, Richard.”

“Sorry.”

“Shh,” said Camille, running her hand, at last, through his hair. “Shh.” Afraid to injure him, she slipped simply to her knees, so that she could have her arms around his waist, her head against his still-beating heart.

“Camille,” said Richard, and his voice shook.

“Mm?”

“What are we going to do?”

She hummed softly. “I have several ideas.”

His laughter she felt, as well as heard. “I meant…”

“I know what you meant.” She sighed, and settled herself against him. _Dwayne and Fidel already know how I feel. The commissioner won’t mind — or wouldn’t dare losing us both. We can just leave it to Saint-Marie gossip._ Camille said none of these things. What she said was: “I want you to tell me about the stars at night. I want to know and be known by you at all hours of the day. That’s what I want.”

“Mm.” She could feel the sound in his chest; she was overwhelmed by the idea that she could feel him thinking. “Open your eyes,” said Richard, and she did. “Now look over the railing. Do you see the long line of stars terminating in what looks like a head?”

“Yes,” said Camille; “yes, I see it.”

“Now,” said Richard, “that is the Hydra, a terrible monster.”

“Oh.”

“Defeated by Hercules,” continued Richard. “But the thing about the hydra is, Hercules could only defeat it with assistance. And in English, one can also speak of a difficult situation as a hydra.”

“Oh,” said Camille again, and told herself not to cry, not to hope for the impossible.

“Now,” said Richard, “if this verandah faced northeast, I would show you a different constellation.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Well, two, really. First, the Little Dipper — I don’t know if that’s what you call it here — but it holds Alpha Ursae Minoris, Polaris, the north star. It’s been known since antiquity. Even without a map, even if you knew no other stars, no other certainty, you could use it to explore unfamiliar territory… and to find your way home.”

Camille blinked back tears, and held him more tightly. “What was the other constellation?”

“The Lyre,” said Richard, and brought his good hand up to her hair. “The lyre, necessary to music; the lyre of Orpheus, who desired the woman he loved too much, and who trusted too little, and who sang of her even after his own death.”

“Richard Poole,” said Camille, when she could speak, “has anyone ever told you that you’re a romantic?”

He gave a startled breath of laughter. “Absolutely not.”

“Mm,” said Camille thoughtfully. Carefully installing herself on his lap, she put her arms around his neck. “Well,” said Camille, “there’s a first time for everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End... and obviously a beginning for Saint-Marie's most tentative romance between a couple of unlikely romantics. Thanks for reading! Your comments have been a generous encouragement of my first foray into writing for this fandom.


End file.
